


State of My Head

by firefly124, TheAllKnowingOwl



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: F/F, WSBB18, Wayward Sisters Big Bang 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 16:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAllKnowingOwl/pseuds/TheAllKnowingOwl
Summary: It had been three months and fifteen days since Kaia died in the world of her nightmares.  Claire was still hunting the thing that killed her and getting more and more frustrated by the lack of leads.  Could it be she just needed one more person to bring her "army" back up to full strength?  Could she manage to keep anyone else from dying to save her in the process?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to profound_boning for beta-reading! Title is from the Shinedown song by the same name.

It had been three months and fifteen days since Kaia died in the world of her nightmares.  Cas would know down to the minute and second, but he hadn’t been there, and Claire wasn’t about to talk to him about it.  He and the Winchesters were off doing whatever the hell they were doing, which was just as well. That kept them all out of Claire’s business.

Jody had been true to her word, staying available but not pushing.  She hadn’t even argued when Claire had taken off for a couple of weeks to go do a couple of salt-and-burns just to stay in fighting shape.  Claire had some idea, now, what that cost Jody, but it would only be worse if she stayed put and ended up sloppy when it really counted.

She was pretty sure it was about to really count.

Nothing in the news had given her any tips for what seemed like forever.  (Three months and fifteen days.) But the latest rumors out of Harrisburg suggested there was at least something worth hunting there.  Considering the rumored baddies were wearing cloaks? Claire wasn’t big on getting her hopes up but she let a little flicker through for this.

Jody’s smile was tight when Claire told her where she was headed.

“Guessing it won’t be two weeks this time?” was all she asked, though.

“Hard to say,” Claire hedged.  “Hope not.”

“You gonna let me come as backup this time?” Jody asked.

“C’mon, Jody,” Claire said.  “Even the sheriff can’t just keep taking ‘personal days,’ right?  It doesn’t sound like much. I got this.”

“Of course you do.”  There was that tight smile again.  “Promise you’ll call if it does turn out to be ‘much’?”

“Sure.”  Claire didn’t bother to add that, close or not, she was unlikely to have time to be making calls when she found out she needed help.

Of course, Claire hadn’t told her exactly what she was hunting, just that it was close.  Which Harrisburg was. But if there was another rift, well, Claire wasn’t planning to just stand there and watch it wink out again.  She did that often enough in her nightmares.

She checked her trunk.  It was still well-supplied:  shotgun with salt rounds, handgun with silver bullets, Grigori blade, machete for vamps, and a box full of herbs she’d started stocking for spells.  She hadn’t had to do much in the way of magic so far, but she knew there was no way that could last. Few hunters manage to avoid it entirely, and none who were connected with the Winchesters.  First things she’d made sure to have: the components for the vampire cure, quickly followed by the werewolf cure. Not that she thought she’d need them for this hunt, but she did a quick inventory to make sure they were keeping okay.  A car trunk wasn’t the best place to store them, but she never knew when or where she might need them.

Satisfied that she was well-armed, Claire slammed the trunk and threw a duffel bag of clothes and stuff in the back seat before plunking herself behind the wheel.  She turned the key and the engine roared to life. She gave Jody a quick wave and backed out of the driveway, setting her jaw as she headed for Harrisburg.

#

One of these days, Claire was going to learn to let people help her.  Unfortunately, that day hadn’t arrived yet, which was why she found herself surrounded by not just two or three but  _ five _ of the damned cloaked monsters from Kaia’s Bad Place.  In the middle of the woods, with no one around for at least a mile in any direction.

At least she’d been right?  

She’d split her lip already, same place as her last werewolf hunt, filling her mouth with a coppery tang.  A voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Alex reminded her that deep tears like that tended to re-open along the same lines.  

Not helpful.

She lashed out with her Grigori blade, managing to slash through the robes of the one closest to her.  It made a garbled sound and recoiled but another dove toward her, forcing her to crouch under its grasping arms. She stabbed upward, just hoping to connect with  _ something, _ and felt the blade slide into the thing’s flesh.  Thick blue blood gushed over her and she closed her eyes and turned her face away, trying to miss the worst of it.  Its stench made her gag, but she forced herself to keep her mouth tightly closed.

Claire rolled and pushed herself to her feet.  The monster she’d stabbed wasn’t getting back up.  She wasn’t going to count it out for sure, but at least the odds were a little better for as long as it stayed down.  The remaining monsters let out a series of growls and hisses that probably passed for language where they came from.

“Hey, if you’d left my friend alone, I’d have left yours alone,” she spat.  “Now, come on. Who’s next?”

They appeared to decide that taking her on individually was a bad plan.  That was true enough, but Claire wished they hadn’t figured it out, as the four that were still standing swarmed toward her.

She lashed out with the blade again, using its reach to buy her some room.  It caught on one of their robes and the monster wrenched it away from her. She ducked and whipped her dagger from its sheath at her ankle.  She sprang up, driving the dagger through the neck of one of the monsters and using her other elbow to smash into what passed for another one’s face.

It wasn’t enough.  Claws sank into her arm and she screamed in pain and frustration.  They weren’t supposed to win. She still had so much to do. She didn’t want to die.

A shot rang out and one of the monsters on Claire’s left was suddenly headless, a shower of blue goop raining down everywhere.  Claire took advantage of the distraction to wrench her dagger back and slash the throat of the monster directly in front of her just as the other monster on her left turned toward the source of the shot and lost its head, too.

Claire scanned the fallen bodies, not trusting that the ones with heads were actually dead.  She grabbed up her Grigori blade and stabbed each of them in turn. Finally convinced, she huffed out a sigh and turned to thank Jody for coming after all.

“You know I had them, right?” she said as she moved.  Her voice faded on the last word as she realized it wasn’t Jody who’d saved her.

“You sure about that, Blondie?” asked a girl who couldn’t be much older than Claire herself.  It was hard to see her in the dark but as she stepped closer, Claire noted that she had dark hair, short and curly, and a mole of some kind under her left eye.  “’Cause that’s sure not what it looked like to me.”

“Who the hell are you?” Claire asked.

“Who the hell do you think I am?” the other girl retorted.  “A hunter like you’re probably trying to be. Difference is, I was brought up in the life and know what the hell I’m doing.”

Claire seethed.

“I mean,” the girl continued, “that’s a nice shiny sword you got there, Buffy, but you still gotta get in close to use it.  Fine and dandy for vamps but bullets usually at least slow most things down.”

“First batch got my gun away from me,” Claire admitted.  She was pissed about that, too. It had taken a while to get that Browning; it had been the perfect blend of handgun and rifle.  She should’ve brought the revolver, too, even if it was still loaded with silver and it wasn’t a full moon. 

Note to self: silver bullets probably work on stuff other than werewolves.

“First batch?”  The other hunter frowned.  “Damn, that means there’s two sets of cleanup.  At least?”

“Just two,” Claire agreed.  She wasn’t looking forward to burying these bastards, never mind both sets.  She waved the sword off to her right. “They were about a mile back that way.”

“Fun.”

“Well, thanks,” Claire finally said.

“You gonna do anything about that?” the other girl asked, waving a hand in Claire’s general direction.

Claire looked down at her arm.  The adrenaline was wearing off and the pain was making itself known again.  It was soaked in blood, both from her and the monsters. Shit, she hoped none of the monster blood had gotten into the wound.  

“Cause I’m thinking it’ll be kind of hard to stitch it up one-handed,” the other hunter continued.

Claire glared at her as she shrugged out of her jacket and folded it inside out before pressing it against the wound.  No way she was getting any more blue monster blood in it than she probably already had. Yeah, no way she was going to be able to stitch that up on her own, and like hell she was going to Sioux Falls General.  Then Alex would find out and call Jody, and… yeah, no. “Fine. But not here, and not until you at least tell me your name.”

“Right back atcha, Blondie.  I’m Krissy. Your turn.”

“Claire.”

“Great. You got a car we need to hide in case the cops show?”

“Not here.”  She’d been tracking these things on foot for awhile tonight, so her car was at least a good couple of miles away.

“Great,” Krissy repeated.  “Try not to bleed too much on my interior.”

Claire rolled her eyes and followed the other hunter to her brown sedan.  She was tempted to wring out blue monster blood all over the upholstery, but she should probably wait until she was stitched up.

Maybe.

#

Turned out Krissy was staying in a campground, which was a plus even though it was back in Sioux Falls.  Much less possibility of being seen by a motel clerk that could rat her out to Jody. Not that there was any reason for Jody to be looking for her.  Yet.

It was childish, Claire realized, to even be thinking like that.  What if she did end up going through a rift and needed help getting back?  Better to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, unlike Doofus and Dumbass. Then again, going after them was what had gotten Kaia killed.  Claire didn’t want anyone getting killed coming after her. Not Jody, not Alex, not even Patience. Probably not even this hunter chick, but that remained to be seen.

The tent was a decent size, which surprised Claire.  She’d never thought about packing a tent in her car, though it would probably be a good idea.  If she had, she’s pretty sure she would have settled for a pup tent. This one looked family-sized.  She wondered if Krissy was used to hunting with other people. Or maybe this used to be for family trips before she got into hunting.

No, she said she’d grown up in the life.  If it had been for family trips, they hadn’t been vacations, and that would explain how well-outfitted it was.  Simple, but efficient. A camp stove sat by the door-flap, ready to be brought out to the fire. Above it hung various cooking utensils.  All normal enough. But on the other side of the flap, there was a shotgun that Claire was sure had salt rounds loaded in it leaning up against a machete.  The only thing missing was silver, and the full moon wasn’t due for a week. Besides, if Claire wasn’t mistaken, some of the pouches in the tent walls probably held more of Krissy’s arsenal.

Yeah, she’d have to look into getting one of these, even if it would take forever to get it this well kitted out.

“This is gonna hurt like hell,” Krissy said as she dug around in her backpack.

“What, no alcohol?” Claire asked with a grimace.

Krissy held up a bottle of drug store rubbing alcohol, and Claire groaned.

“The multipurpose kind?” she tried.

Krissy muttered something and turned back to face her, rubbing alcohol in one hand, suture kit in the other.  

“You know,” Krissy said, “your reflexes might be better without that crap.”

Claire rolled her eyes, which turned out to be a mistake.  She swallowed hard, willing herself not to puke and retorted,  “What, you think I drink before hunting?”

“You’re never not hunting,” Krissy said.  “No such thing as ‘off the clock.’”

Claire supposed that was sort of true.  Monsters sure never cared when you punched out.  The way Krissy had said that, though, sounded like she was quoting someone.

She watched Krissy set her supplies down on the fold-out table next to where Claire had her wrapped arm stretched out on a towel.  At a nod from Krissy, Claire removed the jacket and it started bleeding again.

“Not gushing or spurting,” Krissy observed, snapping on gloves.  “That’s a plus.”

“Well, I always do try to be strategic about  _ where  _ the monsters get me,” Claire retorted.  She was relieved, though. If it had nicked an artery, she’d have had to go to the hospital after all, assuming there’d been time to get there.  With her luck, she’d have ended up on Alex’s floor, and she’d never hear the end of it.

Krissy uncapped the rubbing alcohol and dumped it over the slash, making Claire hiss.

“Toldja,” Krissy said.  “Gonna hurt.”

“No shit, Dick Tracy,” Claire muttered.

Krissy frowned at the wound and poked at it.

“You gonna stitch me up or dissect me?” Claire asked.

“I’m trying to figure out if it got muscle or not.  Not that I’d be able to do shit if it did,” Krissy said.  “Other than drop you off at the ER, I mean, which I’m guessing you don’t want.  I’d ask you to try moving your arm, but that’d probably make it start bleeding more.”

“I managed to stab monsters with it,” Claire said.  “I think I’m good.”

“No, you didn’t,” Krissy said as she switched out her gloves and opened a suture packet.  She cut her eyes back at Claire. “You did everything with your other arm, but this one wasn’t hanging limp, so that’s something.”

Claire raised an eyebrow.  Chick was observant, she had to give her that.

“You gonna scream?” Krissy asked as she hovered over the wound with the curved needle.  

“Just do it,” Claire said.  “I won’t wake the neighbors.”

It took a lot of teeth-gritting, but she managed not to do more than groan as Krissy dumped more alcohol in the wound, pinched it together, and started stitching.  This was going to scar, that was for sure. One more for the collection.

Claire’s vision blurred as she remembered sitting with Kaia and comparing battle scars.  She could practically feel Kaia’s finger brushing the scar on her forehead. She blinked back the tears, or tried to.  A couple landed on her cheeks.

“There.  You should probably make sure you’re up on your tetanus shots,” Krissy said as she tied off the last stitch.  “Or possibly rabies. Don’t know what those fuckers carry. They’re new to me.”

Claire huffed out a laugh.  “Yeah, they’re not from around here, so their germs aren’t either.  Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Krissy raised an eyebrow at that.  “What, you know what those were?”

“Not exactly,” Claire admitted.  “I mean, I don’t know what they’re called where they’re from, but, uh, they’re kind of from another dimension or something.”

Krissy sat back on her heels and her hand hovered over the thick bandage she’d been reaching for, eyebrow raised.  “Or something.”

“Yeah.”  Claire sighed.  “I’m going to have to tell you the whole story, aren’t I?”

“Seems fair enough, considering I just saved your ass and patched you up.”  Krissy grabbed the bandage, which seriously looked like a massive period pad, including the weird blue line down the middle.  She unfolded it and pressed it over the wound, leaving Claire to hold it while she grabbed a roll of gauze and started wrapping it around Claire’s arm.

“Fine.”  Claire sighed again.  “You know, you’re actually pretty good at this.  You a nurse or something?”

“Paramedic,” Krissy replied.  She eyed her work critically, cut the gauze off, and taped it in place.  “Now, stop, stalling and talk.”

Claire licked her lips.  “Fine. It started when my foster-mom called me home from a werewolf hunt I’d just finished.”


	2. Chapter 2

Krissy had that look that most civilians got when you first told them monsters were real. One second she was squinting at Claire like maybe she was crazy. The next, her eyes were just wide like her mind had been completely blown.

“So, there are other universes,” Krissy said for the third time.

“Or dimensions, or whatever you want to call them,” Claire said.  “I mean, you at least knew heaven and hell were real, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Krissy admitted.  “And purgatory. But this is a whole different ball game. And these things can come through because, lemme get this right, Satan’s son ripped a hole between them?”

Claire sighed.  “Yeah. But not because he’s evil.  He was trying to rescue my friends’ mom.”

“Right.  Of course.”  Krissy shook her head.  “Still, why isn’t he cleaning up this mess? If he’s such a great guy and all.”

“Far as I know he’s stuck in yet another universe.  Possibly with my friends’ mom.” Claire shrugged. “Don’t got all the deets.”

Krissy shook her head, her ponytail bouncing with the movement.  “You got any idea how many came through?”

“No.  There were a ton that we took out at the boat.”  Cleaning that up had been fun, hauling them overboard.  She hoped they weren’t toxic to the fish.

“So, you’ve dealt with a mess of these before?”  Krissy looked like she wasn’t buying it.

“Had to give back the flame-thrower,” Claire admitted with a shrug.  “Damn, that worked well.”

“I bet.”  Krissy gave a little laugh.  “Should add one of those to the arsenal.”

Claire nodded.  Krissy probably meant for herself, but Claire really should’ve already.  Storing the fuel for it in the car would be tricky, but it had to be possible.  She should ask Donna how she managed hers.

“Why not just set up in that boatyard and pick ‘em off as they come through?” Krissy asked.

“That rift closed.”  Claire shut her eyes and clenched her jaw.  She wasn’t about to explain that part. Krissy seemed cool and all, but she was still just a random hunter.  She didn’t need to know about Kaia. She didn’t get to know about her.

“You sure that was the only one?” Krissy asked.

Claire’s eyes shot open. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you said it’s been a few weeks, and this is the first you’ve seen of these guys, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So, they don’t look like the ‘lay low’ type to me,” Krissy said. “Either I’m wrong about that, or there’s some way more are getting through.”

“Shit.” Why hadn’t she thought of that? “I think you’re right. They don’t seem to have the brains to hide like that.”

“But they do wear clothes. Kinda,” Krissy said. “They’re not just animals. They have some kind of a brain.”

“That’s also true.” And why hadn’t Claire thought about that either? Oh, right. Because she just wanted to kill them, not understand them. “Doubt that does us much good though.”

“You never know.” Krissy shrugged a shoulder. “Every piece of intel has potential, even if most of it never pays off.”

There it was again. She sounded like she was reciting part of a lecture or something.

“You said you were raised in the life,” Claire said. “The way you talk, sounds more like you were raised in a military school.”

“Kinda?” Krissy turned and started cleaning up the used supplies and packing the rest away. “My dad was a hunter. After he died, I ended up in this kinda group home thing.”

“Huh. Home for wayward monster orphans?”

Krissy’s shoulders tensed.

“Sorry. Just, that sounds kind of like where I ended up.”

“Your foster-mom kill your parents to ‘motivate’ you?” Krissy snarled.

“Shit.” Claire shuddered.  Even Randy hadn’t done that. “No. Jody doesn’t even like that I hunt.”

Krissy turned back to face her, eyes hard. “Then no, not kind of like it at all.”

“I should go.” Claire grabbed her jacket and stood up. The tent swirled around her, and she swayed on her feet for a second or two, but then it all settled down. She took a step toward the door-flap and ended up looking at the floor from about a foot away, Krissy’s arm across the front of her shoulders.

“You lost a lot of blood,” Krissy said as she eased Claire to the floor and propped her into a seated position. “Not enough to need a transfusion, I don’t think, but enough to drop your blood pressure.  Don’t think you’re going anywhere till you’ve drunk a ton of water and slept.”

Claire hated to admit it, but Krissy was probably right. Alex would probably tell her the same thing, just more obnoxiously (if that was possible).

“We gotta deal with the bodies,” she protested anyway.

Krissy rolled her eyes. “Not my first rodeo. But you owe me, Buffy.”

“It’s Claire.”

“Whatever.”

Krissy handed her a thermos and proceeded to sit there and watch until Claire drank down at least half of the metallic-tasting water.

“What, no crackers like at the Red Cross?” Claire asked, smirking.

“That’s for when you give blood on purpose,” Krissy retorted. Still, she turned and fished something out of her backpack and tossed it to Claire.

“Slim Jims?” Claire wrinkled her nose.

“Meat’s better for getting your iron count back up,” Krissy said.

“I’m not entirely sure these count as meat.”

“You want a steak, you’re gonna have to get it yourself,” Krissy retorted, “but not until after you’ve slept.”

“Heard you the first time,” Claire replied. She looked around the tent. There was just the one bedroll. Oh well. She’d had worse. Sucked that her jacket was covered in monster slime, but that was nothing new either.

“Take the bedroll,” Krissy said, standing up to drag it closer. “I’ll dig out my spare when I get back.”

Claire glared down at her knees and bit out a thanks.

“Don’t steal anything,” Krissy said.  

Claire’s head snapped up at that. “You know, I can’t both be too weak to leave and a potential burglar.”

“Didn’t say you’d get very far.”  Krissy huffed and brought Claire’s Grigori sword over, setting it alongside the bedroll on Claire’s good side.

Claire groaned and shuffled over onto the bedroll.  It was warm enough she didn’t even bother crawling under the blanket, just lay right on top of it.  She didn’t close her eyes, though, until Krissy left and the rumble of her car’s engine had faded out in the distance.

Why the hell was she trusting this chick?  Hunters were crazy. Even the good ones. Claire knew that better than most.  She shuddered at the thought.

Still, she’d barely made it two steps toward the door just five minutes ago.  And Krissy had left, so barring any stray monsters or bears, she was probably safe for at least a nap.  She could bail once she was a little steadier on her feet. It’d take Krissy ages to deal with all those monster corpses, after all, so she could be gone before she got back.

Plan decided, Claire let her breathing slow and drifted into a fitful sleep.

#

Plans were great and all, if they ever worked.  Claire woke up to the sound of Krissy coming back into the tent and sat up sharply, grabbing her sword and pointing it at her.  Once she realized who it was, she let her arm fall, though she didn’t let go of the sword.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

Krissy just shook her head and set about hanging her jacket over the camp chair and putting her gear away.  She set another bedroll down on the floor and rolled it out.

“What time is it?” Claire asked, finally setting the sword back down.  It still looked like it was dark out, unless this tent was made out of some sort of sun-blocking material.

“Just after three,” Krissy replied.

Claire closed her eyes tight and shook her head.  “I’m sorry, did you say just after three? As in you’ve been gone like an hour and a half?”

“Yeah.”  Krissy parked herself in the camp chair that wasn’t holding her jacket.  “I know I was calling you Buffy earlier but now I gotta ask: do these things turn into dust?  Because if it’s that easy, you could’ve told me.”

Claire stared at Krissy in disbelief.  “Wait, what?”

“There was nothing there,” Krissy said.  “I mean, plenty of blue goop. But no bodies.”

“That’s not possible,” Claire said.  “I mean, my…Alex basically did an autopsy on one.  It didn’t disintegrate or anything.”

Krissy’s eyes widened at that.  “What’d you learn from that autopsy?”

“Mostly that they have mouths like, I dunno, praying mantises or something.  Oh, and they smell like rotten garbage, but I’m guessing you caught that part.”

“Yeah, I got that, thanks.  Speaking of, your jacket and that towel are going outside till we can wash them in the morning.”

“Hey!”

Krissy fixed a look on her and Claire slumped.  Krissy picked up the jacket by the only corner she could find that wasn’t soaked in either Claire’s blood or the monsters’, then did the same for the towel, and poked through the door to toss them outside.

“I do want to get at least some sleep,” she said when she came back in and started securing the flap. “And that ain’t gonna happen breathing that crap.”

That door-flap suddenly looked incredibly flimsy to Claire.  The zipper and ties would keep the wind from blowing it open but that was about it.  Her heart started to pound. Damn, she’d been more out of it than she’d realized to fall asleep in here!  

“You’re not gonna lay down a salt line?” Claire asked.

“There’s warding symbols engraved into the poles,” Krissy said.  “Anything salt would work on can’t come in anyway, plus some other things that would walk right over a salt line.”

That wouldn’t do much against a vamp, a werewolf, or the monsters from Kaia’s Bad Place, but then, neither had Jody’s house.  Claire willed her heart and breathing to slow back down to normal. Then she really processed what Krissy had said.

“You’ve got Enochian warding?”

“Among other things,” Krissy said warily.  “Why, you wanna copy my homework?”

Shit.  Claire already owed this other hunter big, and she didn’t really know how she was going to repay the favors that seemed to keep piling up.  So she just shrugged like she didn’t care.

“Was there anything else you found?” she asked instead.  “Drag marks or anything?”

“No.  That’d be why I asked if they turn to dust or whatever.”  Krissy shook her head. “I’ve got about half an idea what to look for next, but I need to sleep first.  And so do you.”

Claire wanted to argue the point, but considering the yawn that tried to dislocate her jaw just then, that wasn’t really going to work.   This time, when she lay back down, she actually relaxed enough to fall into a real sleep. Tomorrow would be soon enough to wonder about that.

#

The next time she opened her eyes, Claire’s first thought was that, no, the tent didn’t do jack shit about really blocking out the light.  On the one hand, that made it easier to see everything. On the other, she was awake at… she pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket, relieved to see that she hadn’t crushed it… seven-fifteen in the morning.

She suppressed the urge to groan as she noticed that Krissy was still asleep.  If she wanted to bail, now would be the time to do it, but this chick was probably as light a sleeper as Claire had turned into.  She’d have to be quiet.

Claire sat up slowly and worked her way up to standing.  The tent stayed mostly still and she didn’t fall over, so that was good.  For her next trick, though, she needed to step around Krissy, undo the door flap, and actually get out.  

She made it two steps before she managed to hip-check one of the camp chairs, knocking it over with a clatter.  Followed by a click.

“Oh.  It’s you,” Krissy said.  She lowered the gun she had trained on Claire and reset the safety.  “Fine. Go if you want.”

“I was,” Claire said.  

“I can see that.”

“I’m going.”

“Good.  ‘Cause I want to get back to sleep.”

“I thought real hunters only needed four hours.”

“Last person I heard that from was an over-the-hill idiot.”  Krissy lay down, turned over, and pulled her little camp pillow over her face.

“Same.”  Claire laughed in spite of herself.

“Look,” Krissy said, turning back to look at her, “if you’re gonna go, just go.  But if we’re gonna keep hunting the same things, it’s stupid to do it separately.”

Claire frowned.  This was looking more and more like it wasn’t a job for just one hunter but she wasn’t crazy about teaming up with some stranger.

Stranger who saved your life, stitched you up, and then put you up for the night.

“Up to you, though.”  Krissy turned back over, tucking her gun under her bedroll.

Claire didn’t feel like she needed any more rest but her head was starting to hurt.  With a sigh, she went and lay back down on her bedroll. If nothing else, she could spend some time planning her next move.

She got as far as step one (find her car) before sleep claimed her again.

#

The extra couple of hours didn’t do all that much for her headache.

“You’re dehydrated from the blood loss,” Krissy said.

Which, okay, yeah, Claire knew that.  That was why she was guzzling another thermos of water.  

Meanwhile, Krissy had pulled out her laptop and was doing something on it.  Claire saw that it had a dongle, so the chick must have some kind of super service.  The question was what the hell she could be doing. Checking her email?

“You said it was the Larsen Shipyard?” Krissy asked.

“Yeah.”  Claire set down the thermos and went to see what Krissy was actually doing.  On the laptop screen was a weather map. It was almost like the one they’d show on the news, but without all the fancy graphics.  “What’s this?”

“Weather map.”  Krissy’s head moved slightly as she focused on different parts of the map.

“I can see that,” Claire said.  “Where’s it from, and why bother?”

“National Weather Service and, call me crazy, but I’m thinking that a rip in the fabric of reality should cause, I don’t know, something?”

“I didn’t see any kind of weird weather at the shipyard,” Claire pointed out.

“That’s why I’m looking for little stuff.”  Krissy’s fingers hovered over the screen, first over one light gray patch, then over a slightly darker one.  “These shifts in pressure are moving along like normal. I’m hoping we’ll find one that’s stuck.”

That’s when Claire realized the line along the bottom of the screen was some sort of time bar, and the blobs on the screen were moving.

“This is only about a week’s worth of data, but I’m hoping it’ll be enough.”

“Or it could be a total dead end,” Claire pointed out.

“You got any better ideas?” Krissy asked, never taking her eyes from the screen.  “I’d love to hear them if you do.”

“Scan the local blogs for reports of weird sightings,” Claire said.  “You’d be surprised how much people blab on the internet that they’d never tell you in person.”

“No I wouldn’t.”  Krissy snorted. “That’s why I don’t read them.”

“Ha, I get that.”  Claire had definitely wanted some brain bleach after some of the stuff she’d found.  Thing was, she’d also found leads. Anyway, she’d take the brain bleach over mind-numbing charts.

Still, the charts might be good for something, so Claire watched the blobs move.  And break up. Only to be replaced with more blobs. Her eyes were definitely starting to glaze over, because the only thing she could seem to keep in focus was the crack in the screen.

“What’s the story with that, anyway?” she finally asked.

“What’s the story with what?”

“The crack in your screen.  How’d you manage to just get a little one like that?  My screens, it’s kind of like total spiderweb if anything actually manages to crack it at all.”

“What crack?”  Krissy finally turned and looked at Claire.

Claire rolled her eyes and pointed.  “Right there.”

Her finger brushed the screen and it felt smooth.  Unmarred.

“That’s not a crack,” Krissy said.  She rewound the display and watched as several shifts in weather moved over and around that line.  Then, as if to be sure, she pulled up a blank document. Sure enough, the screen was totally white.  No line. She clicked back over to the weather map and it was back. Barely visible, but stationary while the real weather moved around it.  “That’s it.”

“Holy shit,” Claire breathed.  “Where is that?”

There was a pause as Krissy tapped a few keys.  “Tea? You have a town called Tea?”

“Hey, I’m not from here,” Claire protested.  “Not originally.”

Illinois had its share of weird town names, but that was none of Krissy’s business, right along with where Claire was from and most other things.

“Well, if that’s it, what are we waiting for?” Claire asked.

Krissy opened up a new window and ran a quick search.  “A flamethrower.”

#

The town of Tea was just as lame as it sounded.  Claire supposed that was a good thing, because that meant there weren’t many people around to get hurt.  Could also explain why she hadn’t found any blog chatter while Krissy had driven Claire to her car. Small town like this, people probably gossiped in person.

Not that that was about to be any help.

Krissy’s car pulled to a stop just past what passed for an intersection around here, next to a nondescript patch of grass with woods behind it.  She popped out of the car and waved her phone at Claire, so Claire figured this was where they’d seen that…whatever it was.

There might not be many people around but there were some, so Claire checked her ankle sheaths for her pistol and knife.  She hoped that would do it. The pistol still had silver bullets, but they’d probably work as well as lead (maybe better, considering no one knew how they’d react to silver).  She’d feel better with her shotgun, but it would be kind of glaringly visible. South Dakota might be an open carry state but that didn’t mean walking around with a shotgun in the middle of the day wouldn’t attract attention.

The flamethrower was a definite no, at least in broad daylight.

Satisfied that she was as well-armed as she was going to be, even if not as well as she’d like, she got out of the car and joined Krissy.

“What, no sword?” Krissy asked.

Claire wanted to wipe that smirk off her face, but she ignored the jibe.  “So this is where that…whatever is?”

“These are the coordinates of that blip,” Krissy replied.  “I’ve never seen one of these rifts, but you have. What are we looking for, anyway?”

Claire took another look all around them as she said, “Glowy string hanging in the middle of the air.”

“Does it glow enough to see in daylight?” Krissy asked.

“Not so much.”  Claire sighed. “Unless it’s in there.”

Krissy looked over to the patch of woods where Claire was pointing.  “So, time for some recon. These monsters, are they nocturnal?”

“I’ve only seen them at night,” Claire said.  “Doesn’t mean they can’t be up and around during the day, though.  Who knows if their world even has day and night. Didn’t look like it while I was there, but I didn’t stick around very long.”

“Just rescued your friends and went, yeah.”  Krissy shook her head and started walking towards the tree line.  “Who were you teamed up with anyway that’s getting mixed up with Satan’s kid?”

“Just a couple of hunters.”  Claire didn’t think it was any of Krissy’s business.  Besides, lots of hunters knew about the guys, and not all of them were fans.  No point adding another reason for some hunter to hate them. They had enough shit on their plates.  “Doesn’t matter.”

“Just seems like they should be helping you clean this up,” Krissy said.

“Didn’t exactly tell them,” Claire admitted as they reached the edge of the woods.  “Already rescued them once. Don’t need them playing damsel again.”

“I know the feeling,” Krissy muttered.

Claire decided to ignore that.  Every retort she could think of was stupid and they needed to stop talking anyway.  If these things were either sleeping or lying in wait, they didn’t need to be tipping them off with a snark fest.

“We should use a standard search-and-rescue grid pattern,” Claire said.

“Sounds great,” Krissy said.  “What’s that?

With a huff, Claire went over to where the tree line butted up against plain grass and took about five paces back.  She looked over to where Krissy was standing and waved her closer until she reached about the same distance from Claire that the hunter was from the edge.  At least this was something Claire had that miss hacker didn’t: basic police procedure from Jody’s instruction.

“We walk as straight a line as we can till we reach the other side,” Claire said.  “Then we shift over and do it again in this direction.”

Krissy frowned but nodded.  

Claire got it.  This would work better with more people, but she wasn’t about to offer that opinion when she didn’t want to call for reinforcements.

They sort of automatically took up positions about five trees apart.  Far enough to increase the ground they could see together. Close enough not to get cut off from each other if something went down.  Twigs and leaves crunched under their feet, birds fluttered around overhead as they walked, but no glowy rift showed itself.

When the reached the other side (which came out right behind the elementary school, so no hanging around, that was for sure, and yay for not having a sword or shotgun visible), Claire motioned for Krissy to stay put while she positioned herself roughly the same distance further along the tree line.  Once she’d done that, she waved Krissy to do the same.

“This does make sense,” Krissy said.  “Where’d you learn it?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Claire grumbled.  “C’mon, let’s go.”

The next two passes were as useful as the first.  Lots of wildlife. No monsters, which was good. No rift either, which was good for the town of Tea and their school, but bad for Claire and Krissy.  They probably had only another couple to go before they’d run out of woods and have to try something else.

They were just about a quarter mile from the roadside tree line when Krissy hissed and motioned for them to stop.  Claire didn’t see anything, but the whole point to this pattern was each of them could see stuff the other couldn’t, so she stayed still and waited.

She was expecting maybe a fox.  A deer? Something. What happened was suddenly Krissy was flung against a nearby tree.

Claire ran toward her, cursing herself for leaving everything that worked on ghosts back in the car.  Physical monsters she was ready for. This, not so much.

“Show yourself, coward,” she yelled as she got closer.

“Of course,” sneered a voice.

When she turned towards it, she saw a completely normal looking person.  Just some dude in a t-shirt and jeans.

“Let her go,” Krissy said.  “What’s your damage, anyway?”

“My ‘damage’ is a couple of hunters who think they can wander in here and ruin a perfectly good business setup.”

That took a second to process, finally clicking when the guy’s eyes glowed red.

“Crossroads demon,” Krissy muttered.

“Yeah, got it,” Claire replied.  Now she was less upset about not having the shotgun and more upset about not having the sword.  She hadn’t tried it on a demon yet but she figured Grigori were angels, even if they were worse dicks than most, so it should work.  There was, of course, the chance that the guy it was possessing was still alive in there. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas omnis…”

Claire’s mouth snapped shut as if someone had slapped duct tape over it and she was slammed up and back against another tree trunk.

“That’s enough of that,” the demon snarled.  It rolled its neck like it was trying to get rid of a crick from sleeping wrong.

“…incursio infernalis adversarii. Omnis legio! Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica! Ergo…”  Krissy’s mouth snapped shut as Claire’s had.

While the demon glared at Krissy, Claire reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, thumbing a shortcut.  She shoved it back into her pocket as her voice rang out, starting over from the beginning, “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

“How are you doing that?” the demon raged, its head jerking back towards her.  It twitched a hand at her, but nothing more happened.

Claire forced herself to shrug, giving it her best look of wide-eyed innocence.

Predictably enough, that only pissed it off, and phantom fingers closed around her throat.

“…ergo draco maledicte…” the phone continued.

The look on the demon’s face was almost comical when it seemed to figure out where the sound had to be coming from, but it was too late.  It was starting to convulse. It managed to keep them pinned to the trees and was still choking Claire but it couldn’t seem to do anything else.  Claire’s lungs burned and she hoped it would finish in time.

“…ut ecclesiam tuam secura, tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos!”

A cloud of black smoke erupted from the demon’s mouth as it threw its head back.  The smoke spiraled upward once, twice, and then dove for the ground, leaving scorch marks as it shot through the earth and toward hell.

Claire fell to the ground and sucked in a stabbing lungful of air.  She heard a vague thump that told her Krissy was free, too. Claire cupped a hand around her throat, as if that was going to make it feel better.  Couldn’t seem to not do it though.

“You okay?” Krissy asked, hurrying toward her.

Claire waved her over to the guy lying on the forest floor.  Then she pulled out her phone as the exorcism looped back to the beginning and tapped the screen to stop it.

Krissy was checking the guy’s pulse.  It seemed like she found something because she started yelling at him.

Claire pushed herself to her feet and ran over to them.

The guy looked bad.  The way he’d fallen looked like one of his legs was broken.  He probably hadn’t eaten since whenever he’d been possessed, and he looked like it had been a while.  Or maybe he’d been homeless and that was why the demon chose him. But he had a heartbeat, he was breathing, and he didn’t look like he was bleeding.

“You call nine-one-one for the ambulance,” Claire said.  She pulled her own phone back out. “I’ll call the sheriff.”

“Why the hell are you gonna call the sheriff?” Krissy demanded.

“Because, random guy found unconscious and beat up in the woods? They’ll send someone to investigate,” Claire said, “and I’d like a little say in who.”

“What?”  Krissy scrunched up her nose.

“Just dial,” Claire bit out.  Much as she didn’t want this chick up in her business, she was going to have to be.  Didn’t mean Claire had to like it.

She held her phone to her ear and listened to it ring.  Once. Twice.

“Claire?”

“Hi, Jody.”

#

“Who’s your friend?” Jody asked.

She’d arrived pretty much right with the ambulance. The paramedics were just sliding the guy onto their stretcher. Claire wanted to watch, because obviously they knew how to move someone who was dead weight off the forest floor, and she might need that someday. Jody, however, had other ideas.

“Claire?” Jody repeated.

“Sorry.” Claire sighed. “Jody, this is Krissy. Krissy, this is Sheriff Jody Mills. My foster mom.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Sheriff Mills,” Krissy said. She extended a grubby hand for Jody to shake. “My full name’s Krissy Chambers, by the way.”

Claire rolled her eyes but she had to give it to Krissy. She knew how to make a good impression. It was obviously working, too, because Jody’s stern look was turning into a hint of a smile.

“How’d you two meet up?” Jody asked.

“Oh, you know,” Claire said. “That new app? HuntingBuddies.com?”

“That’s a thing?” Jody asked. Her eyes grew comically wide.

“No,” Claire replied.  “Same way you usually meet hunting buddies.”

Now it was Jody’s turn to sigh. “Right. So, that sounds like a conversation we’ll have to have back at the ranch.”

“Not the station?” Krissy asked.

“Don’t knock it,” Claire said. “Coffee at the station sucks.”

“Hey!” Jody protested.

“You know I’m right,” Claire said. “Otherwise, why do you bring that giant mug from home for your five minute commute every day?”

“Cops need their coffee like diesel,” Jody said.  “I just like mine more like…coffee. Fine, you’re right.  Anyway, you both need to wash up and the shower at home has way better water pressure.”

Claire looked down at herself and over at Krissy.  Yeah, that was one definite downside to the camping routine.  They’d cleaned up a bit at the campground’s main cabin but she felt as gross as Krissy looked.  Maybe she’d stick with motels after all. At least they came with showers.

“Can you at least give me a quick official statement?”

“We were hiking in the woods and found him like that,” Claire said with a shrug.  “Not really much more to say. That’s what we told the paramedics, anyway.”

“You got anything to add?”  Jody pulled out her notebook and jotted that down.  Or, well, she wrote something, anyway, to make it look good.

“Nah, just what she said,” Krissy agreed.  “Hiking. Found him. Called nine-one-one.”

Jody snapped the little notebook shut. “Thanks for adding a little variety. Makes it look less practiced when you’re not word-for-word identical.”

“Not my first rodeo, ma’am,” Krissy said.

“And that’s enough of that. It’s Jody. I see your car, Claire. That other one yours, Krissy?”  Jody nodded toward the sedan.

“Yes.”

“Great, then you can both follow me. I won’t feel like a momma duck at all.”  Jody chuckled and went over to say something to the paramedics, who were getting ready to pull away.

“Suck up,” Claire muttered.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want me to be rude to your foster mother, the sheriff?” Krissy retorted.  “I may have been brought up in the life, but I did also learn manners.”

“I have manners,” Claire said to Krissy’s back as she went to get in her car.  She sighed and headed for her own car. 

This was gonna be fun.

#

It did feel good to have a decent shower instead of that trickle that had passed for one at the campground.  Coming out to the kitchen after she’d gotten herself changed to find that not only had Jody brewed a pot of coffee, but she’d also made turkey sandwiches for them, well, that was awesome.  Claire grinned as she sat down to dig in.

“Wow, you’d think I hadn’t fed you just…yesterday,” Jody said.  She shook her head. “So, who wants to tell me what really happened?”

“I followed a lead over to Harrisburg,” Claire said.

“A lead?”

“There were reports that sounded like more of those monsters that came after Kaia.”

“Oh.”  Jody’s mouth pressed into a grim line.  “You know, I do have one of our deputies monitoring the blogs these days.  Missed that though, so maybe you need to teach him a thing or two.”

“Do you want him catching stuff like that?” Claire asked.  “Unless all your cops are getting hunter training now, they don’t need to be checking out that crap.”

“Point.”  Jody turned to Krissy.  “So, you were tracking the same thing?”

“Yeah,” Krissy said.  “Not that I knew what they were.  Turned out there were more than either of us thought at first, so it was good that we teamed up.”

That was surprising.  Claire had fully expected Krissy to throw her under the bus.  Jody would probably lock her up if she knew how close a call that had really been.

“So, given the complete lack of bodies in Tea, and the fact that it was, you know, Tea and not Harrisburg, I’m guessing there’s more.”

“Claire told me about the rift these things had come through,” Krissy said.  “I went digging through weather data, and we found a blip that looked like it could be another one.”

“Huh.”  Jody looked vaguely impressed.

“So, we searched the woods,” Claire picked up.  “Except we never found a rift. Did find a crossroads demon and exorcised him.”

“That vic was possessed?  I should… no, they’ll probably give him a psych consult anyway.  Assume it’s head trauma.”

“He actually looked like he had taken a blow,” Krissy said.  “Any luck, he won’t remember any of it.”

“I hope so, for his sake,” Claire said.  “Being possessed sucks.”

That got a raised eyebrow from Krissy but no questions, which was a bonus.  Claire hadn’t meant to share that much. Even Jody didn’t know about that part of her history.

“There’s one thing you haven’t covered,” Jody said.

“Just one?” Claire asked.

“At least one,” Jody corrected herself.  “Why are you favoring your left arm?”

Shit.  She should’ve known she couldn’t get that past her.

“One of the creatures got the jump on me,” Claire admitted.  “Krissy took it out and stitched me up. Did a pretty professional job, too.  Even used rubbing alcohol instead of Everclear.”

“Lemme see.”  Jody reached over as Claire pushed up her sleeve.

She hadn’t bothered with a gauze-and-tape bandage after her shower considering the wound wasn’t bleeding, just snagged one of the clear ones Alex said was better.  There was a box of them in with the rest of the first aid supplies in the linen closet. Supposedly, this kind could stay put for days, even if it got wet, which Claire guessed she’d find out for sure now.  As a bonus, Jody could see how nice and even Krissy’s stitches were. It would still scar, but it wouldn’t be a jagged mess like if Claire had tried to do it herself. With her teeth, considering that’d be the only way she really could have done it.

“Nice work,” Jody admitted.

“I’m a paramedic,” Krissy said.

“Yeah, about that,” Claire said, “gotta say, that’s a first for me.  Most hunters don’t have day jobs.”

“Not the ones you run into on the road,” Jody muttered.

“After that…situation I told you about, I decided I should get some training,” Krissy said.  “Did lifeguard training as soon as I was old enough and paramedic once I was out of high school.”

“Situation?” Jody asked.

“Krissy had a Jody, but he sucked,” Claire said.  

Krissy shot her a grateful look.  Hey, Claire might be pissed, but Krissy had had her back on the monster rescue story.  She owed her the same.

“Sorry to hear that,” Jody said.  Luckily, she let it drop. “So, you work as a paramedic somewhere?”

“Not officially,” Krissy admitted.  “I tried, but they kind of frown on it when you show up looking like you’ve been in a bar brawl once or twice a month.”

“I can see how that’d be a drawback,” Jody said with that tight little smile of hers.  “Dare I ask what you two have planned next?”

“Not much we can do without some idea how to find where these things are coming through,” Krissy said.  “We can look at weather maps some more, but unless we know what specifically we’re looking for, we’ll probably keep running into other crap.”

“Gonna check the blogosphere for more sightings, at least,” Claire said.  “Follow the monsters, find where they’re coming through.”

“And then what?” Jody asked sharply.  “Claire, you’re not going back there.”

“Who said anything about going back there?” Claire asked.  “If there’s more of these rips happening, they need to be closed somehow.”

“And do you have any idea how?”  Jody asked.

“Not really,” Claire admitted.  “I mean, the one at the shipyard just closed on its own.  Nothing in the lore about it, of course.”

“You,” Jody said.  “You checked the lore?”

“I’m not completely illiterate,” Claire protested.

Krissy just sat there munching on her sandwich and looking way too amused.  Bitch.

“Anyway, it doesn’t say anything about how to open or close portals to other universes,” Claire said.  “Shockingly enough.”

“We should compare sources,” Krissy said.  “Not that I’ve gone looking for it before, but I might have some books you don’t and vice versa.”

“That sounds like a solid plan to me,” Jody said, standing up and bringing her plate over to the sink.  “Between that and cleaning up after lunch, I’m thinking that’ll keep the pair of you out of trouble until I can finish my shift.”

Claire rolled her eyes.  “Yes, Mom.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Where did you get some of this stuff?” Krissy asked, letting out a low whistle.

The dining room table was piled high with books.  So far, all they’d managed to do was sort them into piles based on how likely they were to be useful.  That pile was looking pretty pathetic.

“Some old hunter friend of Jody’s,” Claire said.  “I think he was kind of a hoarder.”

“Good thing,” Krissy muttered.  She thumbed through a book on chupacabras.  “You ever think of scanning this stuff into some kind of a database?”

“Create MonsterWiki.com?  Sure, in all my spare time,” Claire scoffed.

“You might have more spare time if you did.  Hell, you could make an app out of it,” Krissy said.  She turned to the pile of “potential” they’d made. “Why’d he have so much on angels?”

“Did you sleep through the apocalypse?” Claire asked.  “Never run into a case where the vics all have their eyes burned out?”

“Pretty sure I’d notice if the world had ended,” Krissy said.  “And no, I haven’t. You’re telling me angels are monsters too?”

“Most of them,” Claire said.  

“Oh well, that’s even more fun, when you can’t be sure.”

“You run into one wearing a trench coat?  He’s a good guy. The rest?” Claire flipped open the old hunter’s journal to the banishing sigil.  “That’s how you get rid of them short-term.”

“And long-term?”

“Why do you think I carry that shiny sword?  And no, you can’t borrow it.”

Krissy let out another whistle.  “Where’d you get it?”

“Off the one that killed my mother.”

That shut Krissy up for a second.

“Sorry,” she said at last.  

Claire had to admit, Krissy really did look sorry.  She needed to cut that shit out.

“There’s other swords’ll get the job done, but they’re pretty hard to come by.”  She flipped to another page in the journal and pointed to a sketch. “Those ones don’t have a hilt like mine.”

“Looks more like a giant ice pick.”

Claire frowned and shrugged.  That was actually a half-decent description.

Krissy’s own trove of lore books was heavy on monsters but had next to nothing on demons and angels.  They all sat still in their box.

“That was a nice trick with the exorcism,” Krissy said.  

“Friend taught it to me,” Claire said.  “Said he used it over a loudspeaker once to exorcise a whole building full of demons.”

“Nice.”

Claire could see the wheels turning as Krissy filed that away for future reference.

“Sounds like you have a lot of hunter friends,” Krissy said finally.  “So, why were you hunting alone the other night?”

“Not a lot,” Claire said.  “Mostly, they’re the same ones, and they’re kind of tied up right now.  What about you?”

“I used to have a team.  We kind of went our separate ways last year.”

“They wanted out of the life?”

“No.  I did.”

Claire felt her eyebrows make for her hairline.  That was the last thing she’d expected to hear.

“Anyway, if we’re done bonding, why don’t you tell me which books you’ve already gone through and we can split up the rest.”

“All of them,” Claire said.

“You’ve read all of these?”  Krissy gestured to the pile that was, again, pathetically small.

“I’d already gone through most of them before,” Claire said.  “Kind of a personal interest.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Went back through them after…after dealing with that other rift.”

“The one the Son of Satan created.”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t we be looking at the demon books, then?” Krissy asked.

“The devil’s not a demon,” Claire said.  “He’s an archangel. He created demons out of human souls.  His kid’s a nephilim.”

“Thanks for the lecture, professor.  And these books have what to say about nephilims?” Krissy asked.

Claire picked up one.  “Still just nephilim. No s. They get a chapter here. Most of it debating whether they’re even real.”

“And none of these other monsters—” Krissy swept her arm out to encompass the rest of the books stacked around the table. “—have the ability to create these rifts?”

“Not that I could find,” Claire said.  “I’ve been through most of those but not all of them.  The monsters coming through are from that other world, though, so maybe they can but we’d never have a book about it.”

“Awesome.”  Krissy sank down into a chair and flipped a random angel book open.  

A car pulled into the driveway, causing Krissy to jump up and look out the window.  Claire, however, recognized the sound of the engine, so she went ahead and grabbed one of Krissy’s books at random to look through.  It might not have anything they needed, but there was no way to know without looking.

“What’s going on?”  Patience asked as she came in through the kitchen.  “We have company?”

“Kinda,” Claire said.  She waved a negligent hand between the two.  “Patience, Krissy. Krissy, Patience.”

“Patience Turner,” Patience said, crossing the room to shake Krissy’s hand.  “I’m guessing you’re a hunter?”

“Krissy Chambers.  Yeah. You?”

“Psychic.”

“You live with a psychic and you left that part out?” Krissy asked, poking Claire in her good arm.

“If she’d seen anything useful, I’d have mentioned it,” Claire said.  “Meanwhile, she didn’t even know you’d be here.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Patience and Krissy retorted.  They looked at each other and laughed a little.

“So how does it work for you?” Krissy asked.

“Sometimes I get visions that are warnings,” Patience said.  “They’re… not always clear. Other times, it’s just random crap.”

“You ever try using objects to focus?” Krissy asked.

“I’m trying to learn more about how to control it,” Patience said.  “Haven’t had that lesson yet though. Right now it’s still mostly a lot of meditation exercises.”

“What are you thinking?” Claire asked.

“I’m thinking your jacket is still drenched in stinky blue blood,” Krissy said.  “If there’s more of them around, maybe that would…”

“You ran into more of those monsters?” Patience’s eyes widened with alarm.  “How’d they get here this time?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Claire said.  “You think that’d work?”

“Won’t know unless we try.”  Patience swallowed. “Think I’ll grab one of Alex’s masks.”

“Alex?” Krissy asked once Patience had left the room.

“Our… foster-sister, I guess,” Claire said.  “She was the first one Jody took in.”

“And where’s she hiding?”

“Work.  She’s a nurse over at Sioux Falls General.  She might even be taking care of the guy we found,” Claire said.  “Jody probably gave her a heads-up that he was coming in. She’s not usually in the ER, but he could end up on her floor.”

“Huh.”  Krissy got up from the table and went out to her car.

Patience came back into the room, a beaky blue mask over her nose and mouth.

“You sure you’re not gonna hurl?” Claire asked.

“Got a better chance if I can’t smell it,” Patience said.  “So, where’s this jacket?”

“We should probably go join Krissy outside,” Claire said.  “Jody wouldn’t appreciate us stinking up the house.”

“True enough.”  

Krissy had opened her trunk and pulled out the jacket.  It was wrapped up in plastic, but it still stunk.

“I’m thinking the next stop for this should be the garbage,” Krissy said.

“Sucks,” Claire said.  “I liked that jacket.”

Krissy unwrapped the plastic on the driveway and stepped back.

“What, right here?” Patience asked.

“I’m showing you something gross we’re gonna throw in the trash,” Krissy said.  She rolled her eyes. “The only thing looking super-weird right now is you in that mask.”

Patience glared at her and squatted next to the plastic.  Claire could see she was trying to find somewhere on the jacket that wasn’t covered in blue goo.

“You get that the point is to actually touch the monster guts, right?” Claire asked.

Patience made a noise that was probably her prep-school version of “fuck you” and touched a finger to the blood.  Her eyes shot open, and she fell over on her ass then landed flat on the driveway, arms and legs out straight like a starfish.

“What the hell?”

“Patience!”

Claire bent down next to her.  Patience’s eyes were wide open and darting around.  Her body was stiff as a board, like she was having a seizure or something, though she wasn’t shaking or anything.  Claire didn’t know what she was seeing, but she didn’t react when Claire waved a hand over her face. “What is this shit poison or something?  I got some on me and it didn’t do this!”

“It’s still on her!”  Krissy grabbed Patience’s hand and wiped it off with something.  She also pulled the mask down so it wasn’t covering Patience’s nose and mouth anymore.

For a second, it looked like all of that wasn’t going to make a difference.  Then, Patience’s eyes closed, and she sighed, going limp.

“Let’s get her inside.”  Claire slid an arm under Patience’s shoulders.  She knew she probably wasn’t supposed to move her but, while she’d banged her head on the pavement, there was no way she’d broken her neck or anything, so she mostly just wanted to get Patience inside.

Krissy wrapped the jacket back up and threw it in the trunk.  Then, she crouched down on Patience’s other side and slid her arm across Patience’s shoulders, too.

“This looks dicey enough,” she said, “but if it looks like we’re helping her walk rather than carrying her, maybe the neighbors’ll be less likely to call your mom.”

“Fine.  On three.”

Just then, Patience opened her eyes.

“Hey, you with us?” Claire asked.

Patience nodded slowly.  She pushed herself up a little and Claire helped her to sit.

“Do you remember what you were doing before you fell?” Krissy asked.

Claire scrunched up her nose and looked at Krissy.  What the hell kind of question was that?

“Uh, touching disgusting monster blood,” Patience said.  “Then everything kind of went… nuts.”

“You can tell us about that part later,” Krissy said.

“What?” Claire asked.  

“Shush.  Patience, I’m going to give you a list of words to remember,” Krissy said.  “Apple, ball, cake. Got it?”

“Apple, ball, cake.  Why?”

“Just making sure you didn’t give yourself a concussion.”

“I didn’t hit my…”  Patience slid her hand behind her head and winced.  “Oh, okay, I guess I did.”

“You feel dizzy or nauseous?” Krissy asked.

“I touched monster guts,” Patience pointed out.  “If I didn’t feel nauseous, that’d worry me more.”

“Point taken.  Fine, let’s get you inside.  After you tell me those three words again.”

“Apple, ball, cake.”  Patience rolled her eyes.

“Right then, let’s get you inside, ok?” Krissy asked.

Patience nodded again.  She tried to sit up but sank back onto their arms behind her.

“Bend your knees and put your feet flat on the ground,” Krissy suggested.  “You can help push once we get you up a bit.”

Patience squinted at her but did as she said.

“So, on three,” Claire said.  “One… two… three!”

She and Krissy pulled Patience up to a seated position, then started to lift her.  Patience pushed against the ground a bit, so at least she wasn’t total dead weight.  Once all three were standing, they just stayed there a second.

“You good?” Krissy asked.  “A little dizzy is normal getting up that fast, but it should pass.”

“Just a few steps to get inside and to the couch,” Claire said.  “You can do it.”

They probably looked like the three of them were staggering home drunk, but they made it inside and got Patience settled on the couch.  Krissy darted into the kitchen and came back with some water, which Patience sipped.

“So, that was… intense,” Patience said as she set down the water glass.  

Krissy sat down in the easy chair across from the couch and looked at Patience intently.  Claire wasn’t sure if she was interested in the vision or still trying to see if Patience was concussed.

“What did you see?” Claire asked.  

“I think it might’ve been their world,” Patience said.  “Everything was really blue. Lots of trees. Lots of those… things.”

“Sounds about right,” Claire said.  “Any sign of how they’re getting here?  Glowy strings and stuff?”

Patience shook her head.  “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry for suggesting it,” Krissy said.  “Visions are always a crapshoot.”

“Hey, I’d rather see them before they get here,” Patience said.  “Just… it’d be nice to guarantee that I’d see something useful. Not too interested in what they look like in their native habitat, you know?”

“You sure your head’s okay?” Claire asked.  Better late than never, right?

Patience ran her hand over the back of her head, more like she was smoothing her hair than really checking anything.  “It’ll be fine. I’ll probably have a goose egg, but it’s not bleeding or anything.”

“Your pupils are good, you’re not confused.”  Krissy shrugged. “I mean, you were out for a minute there, but if you have a concussion, it’s probably mild.  Could’ve just been the vision that knocked you out though.”

Claire pulled out her phone and shot Alex a text.  Krissy might be a paramedic, and Patience probably was okay, but now Claire was worried.

Claire: [Hey, when are you going to be home?]

Alex: [What the hell do you care?]

Claire: [Patience kind of fell and hit her head having a vision.  Might be a concussion?]

Alex: [If she’s unconscious or puking, bring her in.  If she’s awake and seems okay, I’ll check her when I get home.]

Claire: [Which is when?]

Alex: [About four by the time I finish charting if I can get off my phone.]

“Who’re you texting?” Patience asked.

“Just checking when Alex is coming home,” Claire said.

“Since when do you care?” Patience looked at Claire as if she were the one with the head injury.

Claire just shrugged.

“Hey, I’m new,” Krissy said.  “I get it. I’d double-check my work too, even if I did just save your bacon yesterday.”

Claire wanted to argue that she’d had the situation under control, but the truth was she hadn’t.  So rather than relive that humiliation, she gritted her teeth and reached for Patience’s empty glass.

“You don’t have to,” Patience said, reaching for it as well.  “I can bring it to the sink mys…”

As their hands touched, Patience’s eyes went unfocused and her mouth hung slightly open.

“What…?” Krissy started.

“Shh!”  Claire wasn’t sure what exactly was happening either, but she was hoping it would be a more useful vision than the one Patience had had outside.  

Patience’s jaw snapped shut and she screwed her eyes up for a second, letting her hand fall away from the glass and Claire’s hand.

“What is it?” Claire whispered.

“The boat,” Patience replied.  “They’ve made a base of some kind out of it.  I don’t think there’s still a rift there, but… there’s a lot of them.”

“Knew I shouldn’t have given Donna back her flamethrower,” Claire muttered.

“What, you’re not going back there?”  Patience looked horrified.

“Well, if there’s a mess of them there, then yeah,” Claire said.  “Someone’s gotta clean it up.”

“There were six of us there last time, and we barely managed to get them all!”  

“Not asking you to come along,” Claire pointed out.  “You can still barely hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun.”

“Hey, I managed to kill one of them.”  Patience stopped herself and took a breath.  “Not the point. Why don’t you call…”

“They’re busy,” Claire cut her off.  

“You keep saying that,” Krissy said.  “Kinda seems like you just don’t want to call ‘them,’ whoever ‘them’ is.”

“I told you, I just don’t want to have to rescue them again.”

“By that logic, I should’ve bailed long before now.”  Krissy crossed her arms over her chest and sank back into the chair.  “How about you try that again.”

“How about you bite me.”

“What is up with you?” Patience asked.  “I mean, I know they’re pretty tied up trying to find their mom, but don’t you think the Winchesters would want to know there’s more of these things around?”

“Jody said we’d handle Sioux Falls…”

“The Winchesters?”

“…and I say we can handle Sioux Falls,” Claire continued. Then she stopped and looked closer at Krissy.  “Wait, you know them?”

Krissy rolled her eyes.  “I’ve been hunting for pretty much my whole life and not living under a rock while doing it, so, yeah, I know the Winchesters.”

“Know who they are?” Claire pressed.  “Or actually know them?”

“We’ve crossed paths a couple of times,” Krissy said.  “And I get why you don’t want to call them. Dean’s sickening when he’s smug.”

Claire grinned in spite of herself.  “Yeah, he really is.”

“Doesn’t make it a bad idea to call for reinforcements,” Krissy said.  “I mean, they _can_ hit the side of a barn with a shotgun.”

“I killed one of the damn monsters with that thing!”  Patience glared at them both.

“Fine.”  Claire threw her hands up.  “I’ll shoot them a text. But only to get more information.”

“Whatever you say.”  Krissy smirked.

She was probably right.  No way they wouldn’t come running.  Dammit.

 

#

There was, apparently, one way they wouldn’t come running:  if they’d managed to haul their asses into another universe again.

No, she didn’t know that for sure, but that was the main explanation Claire could come up with for why Cas and Dean and Sam were all refusing to answer texts or calls.

“Shouldn’t we be worried about that?” Patience asked.  “I mean, the last time…”

“The last time they ended up in Jurassic World by mistake,” Claire said.  “Yeah, I remember. Pretty sure they’ll have been looking for a way to find the universe they were actually aiming for.  Not saying everything’s fine, but if we can’t find where these monsters are coming from here, and we don’t know where they were before they went… wherever… what, exactly, can we do about finding them?”

“Nothing,” Krissy said.  

“Shouldn’t we at least try?” Patience asked.

“You got any idea where to start, I’m all ears,” Claire said.  “Otherwise, I say we work the case we’ve got here, considering you just gave us a nice big clue.”

“So, what, we just go in guns blazing?” Patience asked.  “I mean, considering last time you literally went in blazing…”

“Wish I could’ve kept that flame thrower,” Claire sighed.

“What, you rented it?” Krissy asked.  “’Cause if so, let’s go do that again.”

“No, it was borrowed.”  Claire shrugged.

“Uh, considering how many of them are there,” Patience said, “why not call Donna?”

“Not real big on waiting for the ‘grownups,’” Krissy said.

“Yeah, me neither, but… I hate to admit it, but Ms. Prom Queen has a point,” Claire said.  “Also, she’s totally gonna text Jody the second my back is turned, so it’ll be a team effort no matter what.”

“Who says I was going to wait for you to turn your back?” Patience pulled her phone out and started tapping at it.

Claire just rolled her eyes.

“So you gonna call in the person with the flamethrower?  Donna?” Krissy asked.

“Might as well.”  Claire grabbed her phone and sent Donna a quick text.  Then she sent one more to the guys, just in case. Not that she wanted them swooping in to the rescue, but… she actually kind of wanted to know they were okay at this point.

No reply.  Of course. The guys were who-knew-where, and Donna was probably in the middle of something.  Claire scoffed and tossed her phone down.

It rang as soon as it hit the table.  Donna’s smiling face showed on the screen.

“Hey, Donna,” Claire said.

“Don’t you hey me, missy.  What do you mean there’s more of those monsters?  Where’s Jody?”

“She’ll be back soon,” Claire said.  “Figured you had the longer commute.”

“Well, you got that right.  I’ll just get someone to hold down the fort here.”

“Thanks, Donna.”  Claire smiled in spite of herself.  “Bring the flamethrower.”

“Like I’d forget that!  You saved our lives with that thing, missy.  Betting it’ll come in handy if there’s more of those things.  Hey, we got a name for them yet?”

“Not yet.  Need something cooler than ‘smelly ick monsters.’”

“The guys’ll come up with something.”

And there it was.

“You did call them, right?” Donna asked after a second.

“I’ve got messages in.”

“What, they’re MIA again?  This is getting to be a habit!”

“Not that I know of.  Just probably in the middle of their own case.  Gotta silence the ringer sometimes, right?” It sounded weak, but Claire pushed as much confidence as she could into it.

“I guess.  I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Claire pressed her lips together tightly.

“Is she coming?” Patience asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then why the look?” Krissy asked.

“Just not crazy about dragging her into this again,” Claire said.  

“Thought she hunted anyway,” Patience said.

“I mean this specifically,” Claire said.  “I don’t know. Just feels wrong.”

“I get it,” Krissy said.

“You do?  Because I sure don’t,” Patience said.

“You don’t want more people at risk,” Krissy said.  “Thing is, yeah, more people involved means more chance for people you care about to get hurt.  But when numbers matter, then you need more people to have a better chance of nobody getting hurt.”

“Wow, Yoda, thanks for that.”  Claire rolled her eyes.

“Pretty sure that’s why people invented armies,” Patience said.

Claire glared at her.  To her surprise, so did Krissy.  Patience raised her hands in surrender.

“Just saying.”  She grabbed her glass again and stood up.  She didn’t wobble too much, so Claire left her to it.

The thing was, she wanted them to be her army.  She really did. But the problem with armies was they got hurt.  Her shoulder twinged.

“You know,” Krissy said, “when the FBI—the real FBI—use psychics to help find someone, they try to give them something that belongs to the person they’re looking for.”

“Yee-ah,” Claire said.  “And?”

“And I’m thinking about what just happened.”  Krissy cut her eyes to the kitchen, where the sound of the sink announced Patience was either washing or refilling her glass.  “When Patience touched the blood, she saw that other dimension. When she touched you is when she saw those monsters here.”

Claire wrinkled her nose and shook her head.  “So?”

“So, I don’t know yet.”  Krissy shrugged. She looked over at Patience who was coming back with more water.  “You keep track of your visions?”

“Yeah, of course,” Patience said.  “Why?”

“You keep track of what was happening when you got them?”

“I mean, sort of?  Nothing’s really shown me a pattern though.”  Patience sat back down. “The vision that sent me here in the first place hit me while I was pulling out of a parking space.”

“The one you thought was me dying?” Claire asked.

Patience winced.  “Yeah.”

“Had Claire ever been in your car or anything?” Krissy asked.

“Then?  No.” Patience shook her head.  “We hadn’t even met yet.”

“Then how did you know it was her?” Krissy pressed.

“I didn’t.  I knew Jody.”

“Okay, had Jody ever been in your car?”

Patience shook her head again.  “Never even touched it, far as I know.”

“So much for that theory.”  Krissy sank back into her chair.

“I did have her card, though,” Patience added.  “I mean, I wasn’t holding it or anything, but it was in my purse.”

“Huh,” Krissy said.

“And this helps us how?” Claire asked.

“Not sure it does,” Krissy replied, “but the more you know, right?”

“Right.  Sure.” Claire got up.  “I’m gonna go re-pack.”

“You gonna bury that jacket?” Patience asked.  

Claire thought about that for a second.  “No. Not yet anyway. Could be useful.”

“I am not touching that disgusting monster blood again,” Patience said.

Claire shrugged.  “From what you just said, maybe you won’t need to.”

 

#

“I cannot believe you dragged Donna back into this!” Jody crossed her arms over her chest.  “Why didn’t you at least run it by me first?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Claire said.  “I didn’t know I needed your permission to talk to her.”

 

“That’s not what I mean!”

“Can you two just stop?” Patience cut in.  “Jody, we barely handled those things the last time.  There are even more now.”

“So we need reinforcements,” Jody said.  “Fine. Put up the bat signal.”

“I did,” Claire said.  She checked her phone for the twenty-somethingth time.  “Still nothing.”

“Crap.”  Jody sighed.  “Fine, you’re right.  Last time it was me, Donna, Alex, and Patience while you and Kaia went to that other place.  It’d be six with you and Krissy added in.”

“Exactly.  Better odds.”  Claire kept her tone light but she was pretty sure it didn’t work.  They’d been six the last time, too. Eight, if you threw in the guys.  And they’d still lost Kaia. Who would it be this time?

Nobody.  That was the point.  This time they knew what they were heading into, and there wasn’t even a rift, at least not that Patience saw.  Or said she saw. For whatever that was worth.

Claire looked over her shoulder to where Alex was checking Patience over.

“Right, and when were you going to tell me about that?” Jody asked.

“Pretty much when we did,” Claire said.  “Look, I had a paramedic here and double-checked with Alex.  They both said she didn’t need the hospital if she seemed okay.  She seemed okay.”

“She’s fine,” Alex said.  She ripped the blood pressure cuff off Patience’s arm.  “Vitals are good. Neuros check out. Unless anything new happens, I’m going with it was more about the vision than the bump on the head.”

“Thanks,” Patience said.  “I mean, I kind of figured that, and Krissy did check me over, but…”

“Always good to get a second opinion,” Krissy said with a shrug.  

“Nothing the ER could do for you,” Alex said.  “But if you start to feel nauseous, dizzy spells, anything weird…”

“I’ll let you know,” Patience said.

“I still think you two should stay here,” Jody said.

“You just said we’d help even up the odds,” Alex pointed out.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no hurry to deal with more of those things, but if they’re here, then we gotta get rid of them, right?”

“Same,” Patience said.  “Besides, Jody, you know how it can go.  If I get visions right before something’s going to happen, there’s no time to be texting you.”

Jody closed her eyes and sighed.  Claire still hadn’t heard the full story of how Patience and Jody had met up.  She hadn’t really cared at first, and then it seemed stupid to ask. Sounded like it had gotten pretty dicey though.

“Fine,” Jody said at last.  “Donna says she’ll be there by six-thirty.  If we’re going to meet her there, we need to leave soon.  I don’t want her hanging around solo.”

“She wouldn’t actually go in on her own, would she?” Patience asked.

“No, she’s smarter than that,” Alex said.

“Unlike some people,” Krissy muttered.

“What was that?” Jody asked.

“Nothing!  Time to hit the road, right?” Claire grabbed her bag and took a step toward the door.

Jody side-eyed her but didn’t say anything else.  That was going to be another lecture later, Claire knew.  For now, though, apparently she wasn’t going to say anything, and Claire wasn’t about to push it.

“Which car are we taking?” Patience asked.

“Mine,” Jody said.

“Mine too,” Krissy put in.  “It’s kitted out for hunting and”—she held up a hand in Claire’s direction—“has all my paramedic gear.  Besides, it’s always good to have more than one vehicle.”

“Fair enough,” Jody agreed.  “Let’s hit the road.”

 

#

The shipyard looked the same as it had before:  like someone should just do everyone a favor and torch the whole thing.  Apparently, when you rolled with a couple of sheriffs, though, that was called “arson” and “illegal.”  Like that mattered if these monsters were going to keep setting up base here.

“You’d rather they went the usual abandoned warehouse route?” Donna asked.  “Look, I get where you’re coming from, but even though we’re outside the law with this stuff anyway, we don’t want to attract attention.  Giant shipyard fires don’t just get attention, they get headlines. They get investigations.”

“Fine, I get it.  Can I have dibs on the flamethrower anyway?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Claire rolled her eyes.  She had her usual handgun and knife on her.  She’d feel better with the sword, but she had to admit that it tied up her hands.  She’d have to get some kind of a wearable sheath for it. The flamethrower was bulky, too.   

This time, even Alex had a shotgun.  Claire supposed if they weren’t going to just burn the place down, shotguns were the next-best option.  They actually killed these things, and they had decent range and coverage. Everyone had a backup handgun, too, which made Claire feel a lot better.  

“I think we’re good,” Jody said at last.  

“Ya.”  Donna nodded as she looked each of them over.  “Let’s go teach these monsters a thing or two.”

Claire smiled and squared her shoulders.  Yeah, cleaning up this nest or whatever it was, well, that was the immediate goal.  If it gave them a clue how to go kill their spear-wielding leader, then so much the better.  No point getting ahead of herself, though. Patience didn’t see a rift, just the monsters, so that was step one.

The rickety gangplank creaked as they stepped onto it.  Jody insisted on taking the lead, but Claire was right behind her.  Alex and Patience were next with Krissy and Donna bringing up the rear.  

“We gotta spread out,” Jody said softly.  “Keep our weight distributed so we don’t warn them we’re coming.”

“Or fall through,” Claire added as she passed the word along the line.  

When the message reached Donna, she gave a thumbs-up with a smile that Claire still couldn’t believe she’d bring to a fight like this.  Claire bet it worked well on human monsters. Let them think this ray of sunshine couldn’t possibly take them down so they never knew what hit them.  She was less sure it was helpful with monsters, but really, it was probably just… Donna.

Once Jody was three or four paces ahead, Claire started moving again, matching her pace.  She kept her steps as light and even as she could. There were still little clicks and groans from the weather-beaten boards, but hopefully nothing those monsters could hear.  Not like they had any idea what the damn jawa-looking things could do.

Huh.  That could be a name.  Jawas. She tucked that away for later.

Moving this way took forever, and Claire had to swallow down her impatience.  Running in didn’t work. She knew that. Besides, there was no ticking clock, at least not that they knew of;  the element of surprise was one of the things they needed on their side.

One of the things Claire didn’t like about this ship was the way the gangplank went into the hold instead of up to the deck.  It must have been used for hauling freight rather than passengers to be set up like this. Which was great when it was being used for that, but right now it meant their point of entrance was through a narrow door into a darkened room.  Perfect setup for an ambush.

When Jody boarded the ship, she stepped in and swept the immediate area while Claire covered her.  Then Jody took up a position at the far end of the section of hold they were in. Claire stepped through and grabbed a spot on the near side, diagonally opposite to Jody, so anything Jody couldn’t see, she could.  Alex joined Jody, Patience joined Claire, and Krissy and Donna took opposite corners like Jody and Claire had.

For a moment, they all just stood and listened.  There were doors out of this section. One led to the next level up, where the rift had been before, which Claire was thinking would be their best option.  There was no glow this time, so probably no rift this time, but if another one had opened, even for a little while, to let them through, up there was as likely as anyplace.  She caught Jody’s eye and nodded towards the stairs.

The look on Jody’s face said she’d been thinking the same thing and didn’t like it one bit, but she grimaced as she nodded and moved toward the stairs.

No sooner had Jody gotten two steps up than Donna hissed and turned to the door nearest her.  Jody froze, and the others shifted to focus their attention in Donna’s direction. Then Claire heard it.  That weird noise the jawas made. A thrill ran through her and she shifted position so she could have a clear shot past Donna if one of them came into view.

Donna fired, and then all hell broke loose.  Whatever was on the other side of that door, whether it was more hold space or an actual room, it should’ve been like picking off fish in a barrel.  Would have been, if that was the only place the jawas were hiding.

It wasn’t.

“Jody, look out!” Patience yelled.

Claire turned and saw that there were more of them coming down the stairs at them.  She let Jody handle the ones further down while she worked at picking off the ones higher up, the ones she was at a better angle to get.  

Everyone was shooting something, and Claire just hoped Alex and Patience were shooting the actual monsters and not each other.

“Alex!” she heard Krissy yell.

Claire darted a glance away from her targets and saw that one of the jawas had managed to get behind Alex.  It went down in the next second, and Claire focused back up the stairs where more of them were climbing down over their fallen comrades.  She picked more of them off.

“Where are they all coming from?” Jody asked.  “This is way more than last time!”

“Patience?” Alex asked.  “Shit, Patience!”

Claire took a step sideways so she could get Patience in her line of sight while keeping her gun pointed up the stairs.  Patience was just standing there, gun hanging limp at her side, staring into space. Alex darted to her side.

More of the monsters poured through the door Donna and Krissy were now the only ones covering.  Alex seemed to be getting most of them. Jody joined her on Patience’s other side, leaving Claire the only one covering the stairs.  

Through the gunshots, Patience suddenly yelled, “Downstairs!  They’re below us! Hundreds of them!”

Claire’s stomach churned as ice threaded its way around her gut.  They’d expected a lot. They hadn’t expected that many. There was no way they could take on hundreds of them, not even if they could get them bottlenecked.

“Still think arson isn’t an option?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Anybody know if this thing’s fueled up?” Krissy asked.  “Or where the fuel is for that matter?”

“No way they took this out of commission and left it with a belly full of diesel,” Jody said.  

“It’d be below,” Patience said.  “If there’s any fuel, they’re between it and us.”

“Other ideas, ladies?” Donna asked as she reloaded her shotgun and resumed firing.

Something thumped to Claire’s right, by the door they’d come in.  She dared a quick look, then turned to face what had just come in.

“You,” she breathed.

At the doorway stood the robed figure that had killed Kaia.  It held the spear it had used to do it. And it banged the long bone that made its handle against the floor again.

“Who’s this now?” Donna asked.

“I don’t know,” Jody said.  “Claire?”

Claire didn’t know why she hadn’t shot yet.  She should have, the second she saw it. Should squeeze the trigger right now.  Should say something. Do anything.

The figure banged the butt of its spear against the floor again, three times.

“They’re leaving?” Patience asked.

The hooded figure spun away and out the door.  Claire ran to follow it, but once she was outside, she couldn’t see it.  It wasn’t clinging to the side of the boat or the gangplank. There was no splash to say it had jumped into the water.

“Let’s go, ladies,” she heard Donna say.

Claire stepped aside and let Donna lead the others out.  

“Not the time for a last stand, Buffy,” Krissy said as she stepped to the door.  She grabbed Claire by the arm and dragged her along after her as Jody brought up the rear.

Yeah.  They had to go.  They had to go get the flamethrower and as much fuel as they could find, because they had to blow this damn boat to pieces.

That wasn’t what anybody else had in mind, apparently, though, because Donna was shooing Alex toward Jody’s car and dragging Patience into her truck.

“What’re you doing?” Claire finally asked.  “We can’t just leave them all there!”

“You might not have noticed,” Krissy said, her voice cold and low, “but we were beyond hopelessly outnumbered, then something that only you recognized showed up and called them off.”

“I saw.”  Claire yanked her arm out of Krissy’s grip.  “That doesn’t mean it’s safe to just leave them there!  People will keep getting hurt!”

“Look around,” Alex said.  She swept her arm out to indicate the abandoned shipyard.  “We’re the only people here.”

“And we still don’t have any way to handle this many of them,” Jody said.  “So, it’s time for a strategic retreat.”

Claire looked at each of them and saw they were all giving her the same look.  The one that said not only were they not sticking around, they weren’t about to let her either.

“Fine,” she muttered.  

She flung open the door to Krissy’s car and got in.

“Sure,” Krissy said, “ride with me.”

Claire didn’t answer, just watched as the rest of them climbed into Jody’s car and pulled away.  She didn’t even pay attention as Krissy followed. Didn’t wonder where they were going. She just kept replaying those last few minutes over and over again.

She’d fucking frozen, and she had no idea why.

 

#

Turned out, Jody’s idea of a strategic retreat was her cabin.  Claire supposed that was better than potentially leading the jawas to their actual home, though they had no idea whether the ones who’d been there before were still alive.  They might even be the ones who brought the rest of them through.

“They don’t seem that smart,” Patience said.  “I mean, if civilization evolves the same way in their world… they’ve got clothes, so somebody’s using tools, even though it looks like they don’t.”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” Claire muttered.

“No, she’s got a point,” Donna said.  “Their clothes are crappy, but they’re not loincloths.  They’re actual cloth.”

“You think there’s more than one of the spear ones, then?” Claire asked.  “What, they’re the ones in control, and the jawas are their grunts?”

“Jawas?” Alex asked.  “Seriously?”

Claire shrugged.  “Come up with something better.”

“That’s as good a guess as any,” Jody said.  “Claire, are you sure that was the same one?”

“The same one as what?” Krissy asked.  “Kinda feel like I’m missing something important here.”

“The same one that killed Kaia,” Alex said.  “She was the dreamwalker who helped us find that world the last time.”

Claire nodded grudging thanks to Alex for saving her from having to explain.  Pissed as she was, she wasn’t sure she could say Kaia’s name without wanting to cry.  Wasn’t sure that would ever be possible.

“The one those things were after,” Krissy said.  

Claire nodded again.

“Why?” Krissy asked.

“We don’t really know,” Jody said.  “We’re seriously low on intel here.”

“So, what do we know?” Krissy asked.  

“She said every time she went to that world, she got hurt,” Claire said.  “She’d been trying to stop the dreams, because she always went back to that same place, and they were always after her.”

“They’re territorial, then,” Krissy said.  “That explains why the ones on the boat didn’t do anything till we were on board.  Doesn’t explain why they were in Harrisburg.”

“Maybe another one of those rifts opened up in Harrisburg,” Jody said.  “Let a few through and then closed.”

“Do we know why or how there’d be more rifts opening?” Donna asked.  “Sounded to me like that took some big time mojo.”

“Maybe opening that one set off a chain reaction,” Krissy suggested.  “Ripping holes in reality sounds like the kind of magic that comes with consequences.  Like, cosmic-level ones.”

Claire swallowed.  Yeah, she’d gathered as much from what little her research had turned up.

“What happened when you found the ones in Harrisburg?” Krissy asked.  “Before I showed up, I mean.”

Claire scowled at her.

“What led you there in the first place?” Jody added.  “You were kind of vague on the lead you were following.”

“There’d been some sightings,” Claire said.  “Nothing definite, just… sounded weird enough to investigate.”

“The kind of weird where you expected to run into these things?” Jody pressed.

The glare that followed told Claire she had guilt written all over her face.

“And yet you took off without backup,” Jody said.

“It was just supposed to be recon!” Claire said.  “I didn’t know for sure…”

“You always do recon wielding a big-ass sword?” Krissy asked, earning herself a permanent spot on Claire’s shit list.

“We can play the blame game later,” Donna said.  “For now, what did you find when you got there?”

Claire shot Donna a look of gratitude.  Donna narrowed her eyes. So, Claire wasn’t off the hook, but at least the heat was off for the moment.

“Most of the sightings that had showed up on the blogs were in this one patch of woods near a park,” Claire said.  “They were just kind of… there. I mean, they were prowling around, but they weren’t doing anything. Once they saw me, though, they were pretty pissed.”

“And you’re the only person other than Kaia that’s been to this other world?” Krissy asked.

“Besides the Winchesters, yeah.”

“And they’re still not answering?” Patience asked.

Claire pulled out her phone and looked at it.  Still no reply notifications. She opened up the text stream to the three of them.  Didn’t even show as delivered.

“They’re still off the grid,” she said as she tucked her phone back in her pocket.  

“That can’t be good,” Alex said.

“No,” Jody agreed, “but there’s not much we can do about it without a clue where they are.  Claire, have you tried… praying?”

“What?” Krissy asked.

“Uh… yeah,” Claire admitted.  “Once or twice. But if it’s getting through, Cas isn’t answering.  But if he doesn’t have his phone, that could be all it is. Not like he can pray back to me.”

“What?” Krissy asked again.

“He’s the angel I told you about.  The one in the trench coat.”

Krissy just shook her head.

“So where does that leave us?” Patience asked.  

“We’ve still got a ship full of jawas that needs to be handled,” Claire said.  

“What I really want to know,” Alex said, “is why that one with the spear called them off.  I mean, they had us outnumbered.”

“By a lot,” Patience added.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Claire said.

“Well, I do,” Krissy said.  “If you don’t know what they want, why they do what they do, it’s kind of hard to come up with a decent strategy that isn’t just ‘run in guns blazing and get killed.’”

“The last time on the ship,” Jody said, “maybe they were guarding the rift.  Territorial, like you said, Krissy.”

“And if they went after that dreamwalker, Kyla…”

“Kaia,” Claire bit out.  She swallowed hard against the tears that welled up at that.  

“Kaia,” Krissy continued as if it was no big deal, “maybe it was because she kept showing up in their world.  So when they ended up here, they, I don’t know, can they tell who’s been there?”

“Could be,” Patience said.  “I mean, we don’t really know anything about them or their world.  Could be a smell. Maybe some kind of radiation. Something that we can’t sense that sticks with you when you come back here.”

“That would explain why they hadn’t bothered anyone until they ran into you,” Jody said.  “It’s been a while.”

Three months and sixteen days.

“Maybe it’s worn off enough they couldn’t use it to track you,” Jody continued.  “But once you were close, it was enough.”

“Or they saw the big-ass sword and decided she was a threat,” Alex said.

“It’s quieter than a gun,” Claire said.  “Harrisburg’s a quiet little town, and it’s not exactly hunting season.  Gunshots would’ve gotten attention.”

“Mine didn’t,” Krissy pointed out.  “I mean, unless any reports came in?”

Jody shook her head.

“Anyway,” Claire said, “there was a method to my madness.”

“The point,” Donna said, “is that apparently there are hundreds of these ‘jawas’ here, and they haven’t bothered anyone else till we’ve bothered them.”

“What, you think we can just leave them there?” Claire demanded.

“I’m not saying that,” Donna replied.  “I am saying we need to figure out what’s going on before we try to make another move.”

“If that one with the spear is in charge,” Claire said, “it’s still the thing that killed Kaia.  Who pushed me out of the way, because it was trying to kill me. Oh, and it had tied up Sam and Dean and was going to feed them to that King Kong thing.  I don’t care what they haven’t done since they got here, you’re not gonna convince me they come in peace.”

“I don’t think any of us are jumping to that conclusion,” Jody said.  “But I don’t think we should jump to any others, either. Starting with, considering we haven’t seen any of their faces, we don’t know for sure that’s the same one with the spear.”

Claire gritted her teeth.

“The one thing I know for sure,” Donna said, “is none of us are gonna be making good decisions without some sleep.”

“Um, how’s that gonna work?” Patience asked.  “We drawing straws for the beds?”

Claire tuned the rest out as Krissy brought in her bed rolls and got them to make some kind of watch rotation.  She didn’t think she could sleep until this was done. She probably should’ve volunteered for the first watch and just let the rest of them sleep, but the next thing she knew, Alex was shaking her awake, and she had a crick in her neck from falling asleep in the world’s most uncomfortable chair.  Her phone said it was 2am.

“You’re on till four,” Alex said.  “Then it’s Patience’s turn.”

Patience on watch?  That was a laugh. At least she’d probably scream and wake the rest of them up if anything happened, but that was about it.

This was just a big old dumpster fire.  But Claire wasn’t about to take off and leave the rest of them without anyone on watch, so she grabbed some instant coffee out of the cupboard and mixed it up cold.  She could make it till at least six that way, and by then Jody would be waking up.

Then she could bail.


	4. Chapter 4

Sure enough, when six o’clock rolled around, Jody climbed out of bed and joined Claire in the cabin’s kitchen area.

“You let Patience sleep?” she asked softly.

“Wasn’t going to be able to sleep again after this.” Claire held up the mug holding her third mug of cold instant sludge.

Jody rolled her eyes and turned to make her own coffee, filling a kettle with water to put on the stove. 

Probably the best chance Claire was going to get. She swallowed the rest of her coffee, grabbed her duffel, and headed for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jody hissed.

“What, you don’t think the smell of hot coffee’ll wake ‘em all up?” Claire asked. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

No surprise when it opened right back up.

“I said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’” Jody closed the door just as carefully.

“Recon.” Claire held up her bag. “Don’t worry. I’m not going unprepared.”

“You’re not going at all,” Jody snapped. She was almost full volume now that they were outside. “Did you get hit on the head yesterday or something? We were completely overwhelmed with all six of us!”

“Which is why I’m not going in,” Claire retorted. 

“That’s about as likely as eating just one potato chip,” Jody said. Oh yeah. Full volume now. “I know you, Claire. If you see anything you think you need to do something about, you’ll run in and damn the consequences.”

“If you think there’s something that someone needs to do something about, why aren’t we all heading back there?” Claire demanded.

“The plan was to all get some sleep and come up with an actual plan today!”

“By the time finish arguing about it, it could be too late!”

“Too late for what? There are no reports of any sightings nearby!”

“No official ones.”

“I really thought you’d learned better.”

“I have! I am!”

“Really? Because it looks to me like you’re just trying to join Kaia!”

Claire took a step backward, eyes wide and stinging. She’d never thought Jody would go there.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” 

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

Silence stretched between them for a minute.

“How’re you planning on getting there?” Jody asked. “I know you’re not stealing Krissy’s car, and if you take mine, we’re mostly all stuck here.”

“I know my way to the road,” Claire said. “I’ll hitch once I’m there.”

“Would you please just wait for the rest of us? We can do recon with actual backup, not to mention a plan B or even C what to do depending on what we find.”

Claire shrugged. “It’ll take me a while to get there. You do all that, come catch up.”

“If you think it’ll take the same time to get there, why not wait? If you do end up needing to fight, you don’t want to already be tired from the hike.”

Claire opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. It really would take awhile to get there walking and hitching.

Jody watched her like she thought Claire was just going to turn and sprint through the woods.

That was an idea. Not a really good one, though.

“Fine. But whatever we come up with, it has to involve finding out what the hell they’re doing.”

“Agreed.” Jody took a step back and gestured towards the door. “Come back in for some real coffee?”

“Fine,” Claire repeated, and when Jody didn’t move, she stalked back inside, Jody on her heels.

Inside the cabin, seemed like everyone else was awake now. Patience was in the kitchen doing something or other. Someone was making noise in the bathroom. Must be Alex, because Donna and Krissy were in front of the fireplace doing something Claire hoped involved starting to work on a plan.

“Morning,” Claire said, plunking down on the couch next to Jody.

“It is that,” Donna said. Her smile was as bright as ever, but her eyes looked worried.

“Did you ever notice,” Krissy said, “how noise travels in the woods? It’s almost like something useful to know if you hunt things.”

Claire felt her cheeks flame, and she stared at the dust on the coffee table.

“Did you think we’d just drop this?” Donna asked. “Not one of us wants to see anyone else hurt. You have to know that.”

“I do.” Claire sighed. “It’s just…”

“I know,” Donna said. Then, “Look at me, Claire.”

Claire pressed her lips together and looked up at Donna again.

“I won’t pretend I know exactly how you feel, because no one could,” Donna said softly. “But I do know she meant a lot to you, even though you only knew her a short time.”

Claire swallowed and nodded cautiously. This was getting into dangerous territory. Donna was awesome, and so were the Jody and Alex. Maybe even Patience. But Krissy was an unknown. And this was territory Claire had never gotten into with any of them.

“Just because she meant more to you,” Donna went on, “don’t assume she doesn’t mean anything to the rest of us.”

Claire let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. This was back across the line into relative safety.

“I know that,” Claire said. “I do. It’s just…”

“It’s just that you hate sitting around when you feel like you could be doing something,” Krissy said. “I get that. I do. But running off half-cocked is how you end up surrounded by jawas with a sword that’s too long for close combat.”

Claire felt her blush reach her ears this time.

“Who’s next?” Alex asked. Her hair was still wet, but she was in new clothes.

“Depends,” Claire said. “You use up all the hot water?”

“No,” Alex said. “I couldn’t be sure you’d be next.”

That dragged a chuckle out of Claire’s lungs before she could stop it. 

“Well, if you two are gonna be squabbling awhile, I guess I should take my turn,” Donna said. She walked behind the couch to leave, squeezing Claire’s shoulder briefly as she passed.

Claire wondered how much Donna thought she knew. Whether this was something she and Jody had talked about during those first days after… After.

“Revenge doesn’t actually feel that great,” Krissy said. “But I get it.”

Claire turned to face her, prepared to rip her a new one. She stopped when she saw the look in Krissy’s eyes. 

“One of the people I used to hunt with, Aidan,” Krissy said, “got his throat ripped out by a werewolf on a hunt.”

The look in Krissy’s eyes said Aidan had been more than a hunting partner. Claire found herself holding her breath again.

“It felt good to put a bullet in it,” Krissy continued. She swallowed, then went on, “For about two seconds.”

“Still needed to be done,” Claire said. She was impressed when her voice didn’t crack.

“Never said it didn’t,” Krissy replied. “Just said it didn’t do shit for the pain. Especially considering that werewolf was lunging for me.”

Shit. 

Claire closed her eyes. She could feel Kaia pushing her to the ground. Heard the sickening sound as the spear whistled through the air and then buried itself in Kaia’s chest. Felt Kaia’s fingers grip hers, then go slack. Saw the light go out of her eyes. Tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Heard Krissy get up to leave, the springs of the old easy chair creaking.

“I’m sorry,” Krissy said softly.

Claire couldn’t even find the energy to wave her off. Instead she just gripped her knees tightly and willed herself not to cry. This wasn’t the time. She’d cried then, and she could cry later, but not now. Maybe after this was all done. Then maybe she could cry again.

“We’ll figure it out,” Krissy continued. “We. Your team.”

“How are you on my team?” Claire asked. “Thought you’d just want to get gone.”

Krissy didn’t answer, just got up and went into the kitchen. 

_ My team. My army. Yeah. We’ll figure this out. And then I’ll kill it. _

#

“What the hell is that?” Claire asked.

The others didn’t say anything but she knew they had to be thinking it, too.

Krissy pulled some kind of quadricopter out of her trunk. She flipped it over to show the camera underneath it. “What, you’ve never seen a drone?”

“Of course I’ve seen a drone,” Claire scoffed. “Unless these things are deaf, though, kinda think they’re gonna notice it buzzing around.”

“If they can hear that, they can hear us,” Jody said. “Gotta admit, it’s not a half-bad idea.”

“You know what would be even better?” Claire asked. “If we could get a look at them without tipping them off at all.”

“Trust me,” Patience said, “if I get a look, I’ll let you know.”

“Any idea what triggered it the last time?” Alex asked. “I mean, you saw their world when you touched their blood, saw them in the ship when you touched Claire. But then, what were you touching when you saw them on the boat?”

“The boat? The gun?” Patience shrugged. 

“Right, so in the meantime,” Donna said, “let’s try this drone of Krissy’s.”

They were parked behind a broken-down trailer, close enough they could see the gangplank but far enough that they could bolt if they had to. Not that they would. If the jawas started swarming the gangplank, they’d bottleneck. Or at least, that was the theory. Nobody knew yet if they could swim. Considering they weren’t actually from a desert planet, there was every possibility that they could.

Krissy tapped at her tablet, setting up whatever she needed to set up for the drone to give them a live feed. Much as she hated to admit it, Claire did think it was a pretty good idea. Add that to her wish list for future supplies. Maybe even before the flamethrower, considering she still wasn’t too sure about the fuel storage problem.

The drone started to buzz and slowly lifted off the ground. Claire darted to go see what it showed on Krissy’s tablet.

“Clear as can be,” Donna said with a grin. “Wave hi to the camera, Jodes!”

Jody flipped the camera the bird instead and Claire had to swallow down a laugh. 

The drone lifted up over the building and started towards the stern of the boat. Krissy took a few steps to the side following it.

“You going to be able to keep line of sight on that thing?” Jody asked.

“The FAA gonna come investigate?” Krissy asked.

“Forget I asked.” Jody threw up her hands and went in the other direction, setting up watch over the gangplank.

“It’s not going that far anyway,” Krissy said. “And it does need to be in sight of the controller.”

“So, not so great for sending into vamp nests,” Claire said, mentally scratching it back off her wish list.

Krissy shrugged a shoulder and maneuvered the drone to point the camera inside one of the portholes. Looked like she’d picked a good one to start with, considering there was absolutely nothing inside. Gave her a chance to tinker with the camera angle or whatever the hell she was doing that kept making it tilt all over the place, meanwhile none of the jawas were there to notice.

“Just boxes,” Donna said. “Would’ve thought they’d have the whole place packed.”

“It’s a big ship,” Claire said. “Even if Patience was right about there being hundreds, they wouldn’t fill the whole thing. That’d take thousands.”

“Mm-hmm,” Donna hummed.

Krissy just moved on to another porthole. That one showed more of the same, though the room was, if anything, even emptier. No boxes. Just nothing.

Same with the next.

And the next. No, wait. That one had boxes. But that was it.

“You think they’re all below in the rooms with no windows?” Donna asked.

“Maybe,” Claire said. “I mean, glow-in-the-dark eyes usually belong to things that like the dark, right?”

“They didn’t seem to care last time,” Krissy muttered.

“Didn’t say they turned to dust in the daylight,” Claire scoffed.

“Rein it in, ladies,” Donna said. “Still got plenty left to recon. You seeing anything over there, Jodes?”

“Whole lot of nothing,” Jody said. 

“Not that I’m complaining or anything,” Alex said, “but this is kind of creepy.”

“Everything you people see and this is what creeps you out?” Patience asked.

The “you people” stung, but Patience had a point. So did Alex. As more and more portholes showed more and more nothing except random boxes, Claire’s nerves sparked like stripped wires. She needed something to kill already. And there was something tickling the edge of her brain. She glared at the screen and tried to figure out what it was as Krissy navigated to another window.

“What’s the plan if this comes up empty?” Claire asked. “Room by room sweep?”

“Could be a trap,” Donna said. “Lure us in, then swarm us. They may not be too smart, but they’re good at that.”

Also a good point, but something felt off about that. Claire wasn’t sure they were the ones planning out traps. The one with the spear seemed to be in charge. The only one using a tool. The only one not showing off the glowy eyes. 

“What the hell?” Jody asked.

Claire turned to see what Jody was talking about. Saw her spread her arms in front of Patience and Alex and take a step backward, herding them back behind the trailer.

“Oh shit!” Krissy yelled.

Claire whipped her head back around just as a massive boom sounded. Without thinking, she grabbed Krissy just as Donna grabbed them both and pulled them back behind the trailer. A rain of rotten boards, some smouldering, flew past them to rest in the grass.

“Everybody okay?” Donna asked.

Jody nodded, her mouth set in a grim line, then turned to look around the wall of the trailer. Claire did the same on her own end.

The boat was engulfed in flames. That was what the boxes had to have been, she realized. What the hell kind of explosives did creatures from some other world even have that could do this? TNT? C4? Was it other hunters? There was no sign of anyone, but she supposed they could’ve used a timer.

That’s what had been bugging her. Everything about the ship was old. Anything not covered in rust was covered in dust. Everything except those boxes.

Motion to the side caught her attention, and she saw a very scorched and lopsided-looking drone fall at Krissy’s feet.

“We have to go,” Alex said.

“I have to call this in,” Jody said. “How…?”

Claire pulled her burner phone out of her pocket. It was a crappy flip phone, which was actually perfect. She pointed to it, then pointed to the cars. It took a second, but Jody finally caught on, and she and Donna shuffled everyone into the two vehicles at random.

Claire flipped the phone open and dialed 9-1-1. She waited until the call went going through. The little screen lit up red with a message about location being turned on. She threw the phone down on the ground and ran over to Krissy’s car. Soon as she was in, Krissy peeled out of the lot.

Claire turned to look at the burning ship behind them, registering that Donna was in the back seat, doing the same thing. Then she realized they were also watching Jody’s car go in the opposite direction. What the hell? She tried to get Krissy’s attention, but she just pointed at the GPS screen on her dash. It took Claire a second, but when she found the destination address on it, she gritted her teeth.

That was why Donna was in this car instead of with Jody. Didn’t explain why they were splitting up or if they were just taking different routes. Didn’t really matter for now. They were going to Minne-freakin’-sota.

#

Claire had been to Donna’s house a few times. Not as often as Alex, probably, but often enough that it felt good to pull up to it, even though she didn’t really think Stillwater, Minnesota was where they should be.

Donna opened the front door and waved them both in. Claire went first, heading right for the bathroom. She washed her hands and splashed water on her face. She felt like she could use an actual shower, which was ridiculous. It had only been a couple of hours, and it wasn’t like they’d actually gotten that dirty at the boatyard. 

When she stepped back out, Donna had her hands on her hips and was looking daggers at her. Krissy shouldered past and shut the door behind her.

Oh. Right.

Claire shot Donna an embarrassed look that she hoped passed for apologetic. It must have done, because Donna heaved a big sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and went into the kitchen.

Plunking herself down at the kitchen table, Claire pulled out her smartphone. It showed good signal. No unread messages. She started a group text, mostly to let Jody know they’d arrived, but also so they’d just have one for all of them. 

Donna’s hand squeezed her shoulder, and Claire looked up. Donna was smiling and giving her a thumbs up. Apparently she was forgiven for being a rude not-exactly-guest to the actual guest. Krissy came into the kitchen right then, and Claire waved her over. She was the only one Claire didn’t have in her Skype contacts, so she handed over her phone, and let Krissy add herself. Donna got her own phone out.

[Hey everyone. We’re safe.] Claire typed. She decided not to say safe where. 

Her phone rang a second later.

“Hi, Jody. Putting you on speaker.”

“Glad to hear you’re all safe and sound,” Jody said.

“What the flip was that?” Donna asked.

“No idea.” Krissy shook her head. “Second time they’ve vanished on us. First time like that.”

“Second?” Donna raised an eyebrow.

“The ones from the other night were gone when it was time to clean up.” Claire left out that Krissy had been going to do the cleanup solo. That got her an unimpressed look from Krissy, but it was true as far as it went.

“We thinking they have control over those doorways?” Krissy Alex asked.

“The one in charge might.” Claire couldn’t see how, considering it had taken both Kaia and the Son of Satan to open the last one. Then again, there had to be some reason Kaia kept going back to that same world. Everything she’d read on dreamwalking over the last few months said that wasn’t usually how it worked.

Maybe that spear-wielding douchebag was trying to kill her all along. But if it could travel back and forth, it wouldn’t need to bring Kaia there.

Unless something changed. That felt like a lead but Claire couldn’t see where it would take her. She filed it away for now. She wasn’t sure how she’d explain it if she tried anyway.

“We’re not the one who invaded and killed someone,” Claire pointed out, “so if they have control over it, why come here?”

“Territorial.” Krissy shrugged.

“Didn’t know we were here till your little rescue mission?” Donna tried.

Claire shook her head. “They knew Kaia before. Before any of it.”

“And they were hunting her,” Krissy said. “Like I said, territorial. She’d been there. They were hunting her. You’ve been there. Maybe the ones we’ve seen were hunting you?”

“Not well,” Claire muttered.

“Um, any theories on why they blew up the boat?” Patience asked, her voice tinny through the speaker. “I mean, it needed it, but…”

“I don’t think it was them,” Claire said. “They were already gone. Besides, even the leader just has a spear made out of frickin’ bone. I don’t think they’ve exactly got C4 where they come from.”

“You think it was other hunters?” Donna asked.

“That’s as good a guess as any,” Jody agreed. “Can’t be sure though.”

“So we’re back to square one,” Claire sighed. 

“If that was the weak point,” Patience said, “maybe someone was hoping that blowing it up would seal the doorway.”

“That’s a pretty good guess too,” Donna said. “That’s all we’ve got, though, is guesses.”

“Where are you, Jody?” Claire asked. “Back at the cabin?”

“For now,” Jody said. 

“So, you weren’t followed, and neither were we,” Claire said. “Did we really have to come all the way here?”

“Hey!” Donna said.

“Your house is awesome, Donna,” Claire said, “but that was a four hour drive!”

“We don’t think we were followed,” Krissy said.

“What?” Claire, Donna, and Jody all asked.

“They may not have technology, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have magic,” Krissy said. “We haven’t seen evidence of it, but lack of evidence doesn’t prove a negative.”

“That’s true,” Donna agreed with a frown. 

“We don’t know they can’t fly either,” Claire said. “Not about to bet they do, though.”

“Not the same thing.” Krissy folded her arms over her chest. “All that lore you have, and you’re going to assume there’s no way they could track us without us knowing? There’s got to be a hundred spells to do that, and that’s just in this universe.”

“Duly noted,” Jody said. “So, we don’t let our guard down. Wasn’t really planning on it anyway.”

“It could be way lower-tech than that,” Claire said. “Let’s say you’re right, and they’re hunting me because I was in their world. They’ve got my scent or whatever. They kind of suck at it. I mean, they made it to Harrisburg, but if I hadn’t been hunting them, kinda didn’t look like they were going to find me.”

“They found Kaia at the hospital,” Jody said. “Found my house easy enough.”

“She’d been to their world more?” Claire tried. It sounded weak, even to her. 

“So, we keep an eye out for the kind of stuff led you to Harrisburg,” Donna said, “which was what exactly?”

“Conspiracy theorists on the internet,” Alex said.

“Hey, even internet wackos are right sometimes,” Claire said. “Case in point.”

“Meanwhile,” Jody said, “I say we all lay low. Donna, if it looks clear out your way tomorrow, think you can go into the station? Put some feelers out there?”

“Oh yeah, you betcha,” Donna said. “You’re staying put, though, right?”

“We’re closer,” Jody said. “At least another day seems like a good idea.”

That and it’s not like leaving Alex and Patience on their own would work.

Claire noticed Donna was eying her and Krissy, maybe thinking the same thing for different reasons.

“Okie-doke, Jodes,” Donna said. “We’ll check in tomorrow, unless anything comes up in the meantime.”

Soon as the call ended, Claire picked it up and started scrolling through the blogs she had bookmarked.

Krissy rolled her eyes, but she pulled out her own phone and started looking through it too.

“Guess that leaves me with the real computer,” Donna said. “Help yourself to what’s in the fridge.”

Claire nodded and kept scrolling. There had to be a lead out there somewhere.


	5. Chapter 5

It was all Claire could do not to hurl her phone against the wall. She’d found about eighty potential cases, about seventy-nine of which were probably pure bullshit. None of them, though, sounded like jawas, with or without spears.

Krissy was gnawing on a chicken wing she’d dug out of Donna’s fridge, still scrolling through her own phone with her free hand. She didn’t look any happier than Claire felt.

“Okie-doke,” Donna said, breezing back into the kitchen. “I’m guessing you ladies haven’t found any more than I have, what with the lack of ‘eurekas’ in here.”

“You got that right,” Claire said. “Gonna have to plug in soon, too.”

“That thing running low already?” Krissy asked. “Didn’t you just charge up in my car?”

“Yeah, but that was—” Claire tapped her screen and looked at the clock. “—three hours ago.”

“Which means,” Donna cut in, “it’s time we all took a break and had some dinner.”

Claire wanted to say she was fine, but her stomach decided this was the perfect time to make obnoxious noises.

“Like I said.” Donna grinned. “And you ladies are gonna help me.”

“Did you want it to be edible?” Claire asked.

“You can peel potatoes just fine,” Donna said. “I’ve seen you.”

“You don’t know how to cook?” Krissy asked.

_Little Miss Perfect Paramedic-Hunter can cook too? What a surprise!_

“Oh, and you do?” Donna asked. “Great! Means I can delegate some of the more interesting parts to you.”

Claire saw the second Krissy realized her mistake and smirked at her. There were advantages to not being good at everything, after all.

  


 

#

Claire had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep. When she felt close to figuring out a case but wasn’t there yet, she was often too keyed up to really relax. So it was a surprise to her when she curled up on Donna’s pull-out couch, she could feel herself drifting into sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

The evening air was cool against her skin, and she shoved her free hand into her jacket pocket. Her other hand was pleasantly warm, though, fingers interlaced with Kaia’s. They probably looked cheesy as hell, and Alex would totally give them both shit if she ever saw them walking down the street like this, but Claire didn’t care. A couple of old geezers had looked at them like they had something to say about it, but one look from Claire had convinced them to keep going without talking.

“So, best pizza in Sioux Falls?” Kaia asked, a little smile playing around the edges of her lips.

“I mean, that’s not saying much, I guess,” Claire said, “but yeah, Fiero’s is pretty awesome.” She bit her lip to keep from babbling any more than she was already.

“Cool,” was all Kaia said in response, and now she smiled for real.

Hopefully there were ways to put that look on her face without Claire having to always make an idiot out of herself. If not, well, Claire would just have to learn to deal with that.

The smile stayed right through getting their pizza and scarfing down as much of it as they could. They sat for a ridiculous amount of time after, just chilling in silence while Claire drank up Kaia’s smile.

 

 

“We should head back to Jody’s,” she said finally. She reached across the booth and squeezed Kaia’s hand.

Huh. That felt weird.

“What, are my hands cold or something?” Kaia asked.

“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous.” Claire looked down at their joined hands and squeezed again.

Still weird. She closed her eyes and squeezed again.

When she opened them, she had the sheets of Donna’s pull-out couch bunched up between her fingers, and her cheeks were wet. In the dark of the living room, the ceiling looked as far away as any chance of ever having that. Even if Kaia hadn’t gotten killed--( _thrown her life away saving Claire_ , a corner of her brain supplied, _just like Dad, just like Mom_ )--that never would’ve happened. Never mind that the smile dream-Kaia had worn was the same one Kaia had shown when they’d been comparing scars on Jody’s doorstep. Claire couldn’t walk away from hunting, and Kaia deserved better. Deserved normal.

Not that it mattered anymore.

Claire swallowed a sob, bitterly regretting that she’d given up Donna’s familiar guest room to Krissy. Politeness sucked, and even though as far as she could tell, everyone was asleep, Claire wasn’t about to give in and cry without at least some semblance of privacy. The living room was too open.

Instead, she rolled over and smashed her face into the pillow, willing herself back to sleep (but without dreams this time, thankyouverymuch). By the time sleep came again, it seemed like only seconds before Donna woke her up, sounding way too cheerful for ass o’clock or whatever it was.

Time to get back to work.

 

#

“That was delicious, Donna. Thanks,” Krissy said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Claire added. It had been delicious, really, even if it was just bacon, eggs and home fries, same as dinner had been just meatloaf and potatoes. Being the potato-peeler meant also being the dishwasher, though. Not her favorite, especially considering Krissy was already shifting back into research mode.

“Gotta feed our brains, right ladies?” Donna asked.

“I guess,” Claire mumbled. She hoped the sound of the water running into the sink covered it, because she knew she sounded like exactly the sort of sulky kid Jody still saw her as. She didn’t like to think of Donna seeing her that way too.

“Not sure it’ll make more leads pop up,” Krissy said, “but I guess it’ll help us find them if they do.”

“There’s the spirit!”

Claire wished she had even half Donna’s optimism sometimes. Expecting the worst was safer. Life had taught Claire that from the time her family got ripped apart. Somehow, though, Donna still kicked ass. It’d be nice to figure out how she did that.

As if to agree with her thoughts, a ridiculously bouncy ringtone went off.

“Hey, Jodes! Putting you on speaker.”

“Same here,” Jody’s voice echoed. “You got anything new?”

“Whole lotta bupkus,” Donna said. “I mean, unless you two found something you didn’t share with the class yet?”

“Nope,” Claire said. She shook suds off her hands and started the sink draining.

“Not a thing,” Krissy added.

“How about you?” Donna asked.

“Wish I could say we had a solid lead of some kind,” Jody said. “Alex did have an idea, though.”

Oh, this was going to be good.

“Kaia said those angels had kidnapped her before she ended up with Sam and Dean, right?” Alex said. “And before that, she’d been at that rehab center.”

“Yeah, and?” Claire asked.

“So, if these monsters are following some kind of scent from people who’ve been to their world, maybe they’d end up there.”

“Could end up at your hospital, too,” Donna said.

“Gotta go in for work tonight anyway,” Alex said. “I’ll keep my eyes open, but since they’ve already been here, I’m hoping they won’t come again.”

“If they’re just following… whatever… they might not know some of them already went there. Could lead them to Jody’s house, too,” Claire said. Her stomach churned at the idea. This was why they shouldn’t have split up!

“That trail might be too cold,” Donna said. “I mean, if it’s anything like how a bloodhound works.”

“Unless we want to keep spinning our wheels, we’ve gotta try something,” Jody said. “If you’ve got any better ideas, I’m all ears.”

“So, you’re watching the potential sites in Sioux Falls,” Krissy said. “Are the other sites near here?”

“Well, they’re in Minnesota, at least,” Donna said.

“How far is Mankato from Stillwater?” Claire asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Coupla hours,” Donna said. “If I’m gonna see what the official channels have here, though, that’ll leave just the two of you.”

“We’ve got this,” Krissy said. “What’re you doing for transport, though?”

“Hoping you two could give me a lift on account of my car breaking down in Sioux Falls and being stuck in the shop.” Donna winked. That _was_ a better explanation than saying she’d left it at Jody’s cabin while they went to investigate monsters at the ship that just exploded. “I can sign out a car once I’m there, though.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jody said.

It did. Claire just wasn’t sure it was a great one.

 

#

The rehab place had been a bust, which was pretty much what Claire had expected. All they knew was some weird kid had showed up, knocked the main social worker out, and left with Kaia. They all thought he was her dealer or something. That was pushing it for rationalization, Claire thought. Dealers always had more customers. They didn’t go around busting them out to keep the money rolling. But she supposed they’d had to think up something that made more sense than what had actually happened.

Donna’s research hadn’t turned up much. She had found a report of a body found with a weird knife sticking out of it, its eyes burned out, and broken wings burnt into the floor around it, though, which was what had led them to this particular abandoned warehouse. Not that it was telling them much so far. They’d swept every corner of the main space and the office. It was pretty much just an abandoned warehouse. One lone stack of palettes lashed together in a corner that probably used to hold whatever this place used to store. A desk that had seen better days before either of them had been born in the office. Not much else.

The wing-print was still seared into the floor. Good. Because the only other thing worth noticing was the chair in the middle of the space, ropes lying on the seat and the floor. Claire tasted bile. They’d tied her up. Everything else Kaia had been through was bad enough, but somehow knowing she’d been tied up in this place by some douchebag angels just made it all worse.

Yeah, and you saw the wing-marks in that ship. One died here and the rest of those angels are toast.

She couldn’t know for sure the ones at the ship were the same ones, but she had to hope so. She had no way of tracking them down and doing it herself, and she had her hands pretty full hunting down the thing that had actually killed Kaia.

“What are we even looking for?” Krissy asked. She’d tucked her gun back into her belt and was holding something Claire couldn’t quite see. “I mean, I’ve run the EMF and all the usual, but it’s not like we’re looking for something to actually be here.”

Claire darted her eyes over to the other hunter. She licked her lips as she thought. Then, swallowing her own disgust, she sat down in the chair. Closing her eyes, she gripped the armrests and tried to put herself in Kaia’s shoes.

What would she have been thinking? Probably that she was going to die. She wasn’t wrong, just wrong about where.

Useless. Focus.

All of this was before she’d opened the door to that other world. Had she even known that was why the guys were looking for her? Had she known anyone was looking for her?

She knew Jack broke her out of rehab. She had to know someone had her back.

Too many missing pieces. Whenever those dickwads answered their damned phones, she was going to insist on getting the whole story out of them. Dean had tried, right after, but she hadn’t been ready to hear it.

“You trying to get a vision?” Krissy asked. “Because if you’re psychic, too, you could’ve mentioned that earlier.”

Claire opened her eyes and scoffed. “No, I’m not psychic. What, you never tried to get into a vic’s head on a hunt?”

“Not like that,” Krissy said. “You even gonna be able to do this?”

That was when Claire realized her cheeks were wet. Irritated, she scrubbed them dry.

“Like I said, getting in the vic’s head.”

“And did that help?”

“Not really,” Claire admitted. “This trail’s cold. I doubt even the jawas would’ve found it.”

“Unless they’re tracking you now,” Krissy pointed out. “We still don’t know how they do that.”

“We still don’t really know if they do that,” Claire said. “We got a whole lot of ifs and maybes and no solid leads.”

“Yeah, well, that’s usually how it works, right up until a flimsy lead turns into a solid one,” Krissy said. Her eyes hardened. “So, you gonna sit there and cry, or are you gonna work this case?”

Claire got up from she chair and was about to rip this Krissy chick a new one when she stopped, mouth half open. She’d just heard something, and it wasn’t the chair creaking when she stood up.

“What…?”

“Sh!”

The noise came again. Louder. Too loud to be rats. Something was moving behind one of the palette stacks.

We cleared this place. Whatever it is, it just got here.

Claire pulled her gun back out and looked over to Krissy, who’d traded her EMF meter for her gun. With a nod towards the palettes, Claire stepped towards one side of the pile watching to be sure Krissy was heading to the other. They weren’t quite in synch, but they both approached the noise and came to a stop right at the point where they couldn’t quite see behind it.

Claire held up a hand and showed three fingers. Two. One.

They both charged around the stack, and Claire fully expected to see one of the jawas cowering back there. Instead, she was greeted with the sight of Krissy pointing a gun at her and nothing else.

They lowered their guns. Krissy still had hers gripped tight with both hands, eyes darting around wildly. Claire knew she was doing the same. Even if it had been a rat, they should’ve seen something. Anything.

“Oh, shit!”

Claire’s eyes snapped back to Krissy just as a jawa landed on her, chittering wildly.

Claire didn’t even think, just aimed and fired. Blue blood exploded from its head, covering Krissy, who sputtered and shoved the thing off her.

Claire looked up. The thing must’ve climbed the pile of palettes while they were stalking it. They’d looked everywhere but up and it had almost gotten them killed. There was nothing else up there, though. Not on top of the palettes. Not up in the rafters.

“There’s never just one,” Claire muttered.

“Great,” Krissy replied. She swept her gun along the room, finally tracking over to the stairs leading to the office. “Think we missed something in there?”

“We missed something somewhere,” Claire said.

She was about to suggest they repeat their original sweep pattern when the door to the office burst open with a crash, sending splinters of wood and shards of glass everywhere.

“Yeah,” Krissy agreed. She shot one of the swarming jawas in the head. “Guess we did.”

Claire couldn’t even guess how many of them there were. “Too many” was the best estimate she could make as she and Krissy took them out one by one, pinned in this corner with the damn palettes.

“Go up!” Krissy shouted.

“Are you insane?” Claire blew away two more.

“Worked for him.”

Okay, she had a point, but that jawa had crawled up there while they—all two of them—were focused on ground level. There was no time to argue it, though, because Krissy was already climbing up. Hearing another shot, Claire turned quickly to see that Krissy had stopped halfway up, hanging onto the strap lashing the palettes together with one hand while she fired at a jawa that had hold of her leg. Claire picked off the one next to it and turned back to the ones advancing on her.

It seemed like it took forever, but had probably only been a couple of minutes, when suddenly there were shots raining down from above.

“Your turn, Blondie!”

Claire’s gun clicked on an empty chamber. Yup, time to go. She tucked the gun away and scrambled up the pile of wood. She was almost to the top when sharp pain lanced through her right ankle. Not bothering to look, she kicked out at the thing holding onto her.

It didn’t let go. Instead, the momentum pulled her away from the palettes, costing her the other foothold she’d had. Splinters dug into her hands as the jawa tried to pull her the rest of the way off.

The next gunshot from above took that one out,and Claire slammed back against the palettes as it let go and fell away. She scrambled with her feet to get climbing again, but her right foot didn’t want to take her weight. She gritted her teeth and pushed upwards with all her might. One more push and she was lying flat on her stomach.

“Thanks,” she gasped.

“Don’t mention it. Just start shooting.”

She spared a second to hope the jawas didn’t decide to go all Jenga on the damn thing as she took up a kneeling stance with her back to Krissy. She switched out her clip and started firing.

Keeping her focus on the jawas that were closest to their shaky little tower was the sanest, she figured. If she looked at the big picture, at how many there were all together, she wasn’t sure she could keep going. But she could just keep picking off the ones that were closest.

Behind her, she heard Krissy switch out a clip of bullets.

“How many you got left?” she asked.

“One more clip after this,” Krissy said after she took another shot.

“Same.” Claire took out another cluster that was climbing over the bodies of their fallen comrades. “Not enough.”

“You got any ideas, I’m listening!”

The problem was, Claire had no ideas for this. This was supposed to be a recon mission only. Just see what there was or wasn’t. They’d been expecting a dead end. Maybe a handful of jawas staking the place out. Not… this. This looked like what Patience had described at the ship, only this time there were just two of them. Donna would come check it out when they didn’t get back in a reasonable amount of time, but there was no way she’d get here in time to help.

“We’d have to get to your car to re-arm,” Claire said.

“It’s not KITT,” Krissy said. “We’d actually have to climb down from here and get to it. Kinda thinking that’s not happening.”

Yeah, that was going to be a problem. While they’d been talking, they’d spaced out their shots to be able to hear each other. The problem with that was that had given the jawas a chance to close in, and Claire had to shoot two that were actually starting to climb up to them. A flurry of shots from behind her said Krissy had the same problem.

They could use a talking car right about now.

“This might be a good time for some of that prayin’ you were talking about,” Krissy said. “Not my thing, but if it works for you…”

“Not gonna do any good right now,” Claire bit out. Never mind the total lack of response she’d been getting, there was still the problem of actually getting there. No, Cas wasn’t going to save them any more than Donna was.

A loud bang on the metallic stairs had Claire turning to look over her shoulder to the destroyed office door. There, on the top step, stood the hooded figure with the spear.

The jawas stopped and looked too. Then they started picking up the dead ones and dragging them towards the stairs as the one with the spear strode toward them.

“What the hell?” Krissy asked.

“I don’t know,” Claire retorted.

That’s when she realized there was a familiar glow shining through the office doorway. They were bringing their dead home.

_Well, that explains the mystery cleanup._

The spear-wielder stopped a few feet away from where Krissy and Claire were perched. It didn’t bang its spear on the floor again. It didn’t take aim at them. It just stood there. That was going to be its last mistake.

Claire huffed out a breath and pointed her gun at it.

“Stop following me,” it said.

“Monsters from other dimensions speak English?” Krissy asked.

Claire moved her finger off the trigger.

“I do,” it said, using a voice Claire had never thought she’d hear again.

It looked up at them and its hood fell back.

“That’s impossible,” Claire whispered.

“What, that it looks human?” Krissy asked.

“I saw you die,” Claire said, and if her voice shook, well, she figured she was entitled.

The… it had to be a shapeshifter, right? Whatever it was, it shook Kaia’s head at her, pulled its hood back up, and turned to leave.

“What, you think you can just give us orders and walk away?” Krissy demanded.

Claire looked up and saw that Krissy was still aiming at it. At her. She grabbed Krissy’s arm and shoved it down.

“What the fuck, Novak?” Krissy demanded, though she didn’t shrug her off.

“Something’s not right here,” she said. Her stomach was churning, and for a second it felt like the room wanted to tilt sideways.

“No shit,” Krissy retorted, “you’re letting the thing that killed your girlfriend go because it stole her face.”

Claire shook her head.

The figure stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back at them.

“Watch out for those doorknobs,” she said before turning and stepping through the door.

That didn’t mean anything. Shapeshifters could steal memories, right? Or could they? Claire closed her eyes and tried to think, but she couldn’t seem to focus. Everything was just fuzzy.

“Oh shit,” was the last thing she heard Krissy say before everything went dark.

  


 

#

Her head was pounding. She hadn’t felt this bad since… she shoved that memory away. She couldn’t figure out why she hurt. Maybe if she knew where she was, that’d give her a clue.

When she managed to force her eyes open, she saw that she was in Donna’s guest room. There was no mistaking that floral wallpaper, never mind the sign advertising free weeds (pick your own). Why was she at Donna’s?

“Ooh, you’re up!” Donna came in with a glass of water that she set down on the table next to the bed. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Like a used-up meatsuit,” Claire groaned.

“I’m guessing I don’t want to know how you know that,” Donna said, her smile faltering.

“Probably not.” Claire pushed herself up on her elbows and reached for the glass. That’s when she noticed the thing in her arm. “What the hell?”

“You lost a lot of blood,” Donna said. Her smile was completely gone now. “I’m not asking where that friend of yours got the supply to give you, but she’s given you two units already.”

“Great.” Now she owed Krissy her life again. Just what she always wanted. She grabbed the glass of water, shaker than she’d have liked, and brought it to her lips for a gulp.

“Easy now,” Donna said.

Claire forced herself to set the glass back down. Her stomach was twisting itself in knots, and she really didn’t want to puke.

“What do you remember?” Donna asked. She sat down next to Claire’s feet.

“Krissy didn’t tell you?” Claire dragged herself up the rest of the way. She might’ve gotten hurt, but she wasn’t a damn patient. She didn’t need to be looking up at Donna while they talked.

“I want to hear your version.”

Claire winced. Getting their stories separately. That was classic. What, exactly, did Donna think had happened that she needed to pull out that trick?

Claire explained what they’d found when they got there. She left out the part about the chair. That didn’t really have anything to do with anything, and she’d embarrassed herself enough today. She explained the first jawa they found and then how they got swarmed. How the hooded figure had shown up. How it looked and sounded like Kaia.

“What else did it say to you?” Donna asked.

Claire’s fingertips drifted to her forehead. “Warned me to stay away from doorknobs.”

“Why would it do that?”

“To let me know it has Kaia’s memories,” Claire said. “That it knows where I got this.”

Donna’s forehead wrinkled. “Figured it might be something like that. But you said you saw Kaia… die.”

Claire nodded, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.

“And everything your friend downstairs knows, everything Jody knows, and everything the internet has to say on the subject agrees on one thing,” Donna said. “To be able to gain a person’s memories, a shapeshifter needs to have contact with a live person. They usually keep their victims alive if they need to impersonate the same person for a long time.”

That’s what she’d been trying to remember right before she’d passed out.

“Maybe that’s not how it works in that other universe,” Claire said. “I mean, the monsters bleed blue. Who knows what else is weird over there?”

“That’s true,” Donna said. “Still. You got the feeling we’ve been working the wrong case here?”

“Yeah,” Claire agreed. Problem was, she’d been working this case for three months and eighteen days now. What the hell had she missed if she’d been looking for the wrong thing? What if Kaia hadn’t died over there, and they hadn’t gone back for her? But she had died, right? “You think there’s more than one of them?”

“I think if there were, those hand-made weapons wouldn’t be identical,” Donna said. “Why don’t we start with exactly what you saw in that other world.”

 

#

When she’d finished Claire reached for the glass again only to find that she’d finished it off taking sips as she spoke.

“Something about that’s bugging me,” Donna said.

“Which part?” Claire asked. All of it bothered her.

“Can I call in Krissy?” Donna asked. “I know what my medical examiners have told me, but I’m still not a medical person.”

Actually, the very last thing Claire wanted was to share any of Kaia’s last moments with Krissy. Yeah, she owed Krissy her life a couple of times over, but she didn’t owe her that. But if there was something that could help… She swallowed her frustration.

“Sure.”

Krissy came in when Donna called her. She looked around the room for a second, then grabbed the chair that was tucked under the desk by the window and sat on it. She looked completely out of place sitting on it, ornate antique wood and pink cushion looking way too frilly for her. Claire supposed she looked stupid when she sat in it too.

“So, um, thanks for saving my life,” Claire said. “Again.”

“You’re welcome,” Krissy said. “That’s not all you called me in for, though.”

“Claire was just reviewing the last time she saw that caped figure,” Donna said. “Something about it sounds off to me, but I want your medical expertise.”

Krissy raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Shoot.”

“Where do you want me to start?” Claire asked.

“From when Kaia pushed you down,” Donna said.

Claire nodded. Of course.

“So, she pushed me down because that thing threw its spear at me,” Claire said. “I didn’t see anything right away, but then she fell down next to me. The spear was sticking out of her right about here.”

“So, not a heart wound,” Krissy said. “Maybe liver, maybe something else like pancreas. Even spleen.”

“Go on,” Donna said softly. She took Claire’s hand.

“She couldn’t talk,” Claire said. She just reached out for my hand. She… held on as long as she could, then…”

Claire closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

“She let go. The light went out of her eyes. She stopped breathing.”

“But she was still bleeding,” Donna said.

“Was she on her back?” Krissy asked, edging forward on her chair.

Claire just nodded. She didn’t see what that mattered.

“And there was still blood coming out of the wound on her abdomen?” Krissy asked.

“Yes, okay! Enough, already! This isn’t helping anything!”

“It might,” Krissy said. “So the guys dragged you back then, and you didn’t see what happened next.”

“Yeah, and?” Claire demanded. There was no stopping the tears at this point, so she just pushed through them. “I tried to go back, but the portal closed!”

“And we have no idea what kind of healing magic they might have over there,” Krissy said.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Donna said. “So, I was right, then?”

“Right about what?” Claire asked.

“Right that blood doesn’t flow against gravity,” Krissy said. “Claire, she might have looked dead. She might have even stopped breathing. But if her blood was flowing basically uphill, then her heart was still beating the last time you saw her.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what it means about that one with the spear,” Donna said, “but I think it’s possible Kaia’s still alive.”


	6. Chapter 6

Claire had told Donna and Krissy that she needed to sleep. They probably hadn’t bought it, but they’d left her alone, so she was calling it a win. Now if she could just get her thoughts to slow down long enough to get a good look at them.

Kaia hadn’t been dead. She’d been close. Had to be. But she hadn’t been. If she’d made the guys help her drag Kaia back, could they have revived her? Had the one with the spear revived her? Why? Kaia said everything there tried to kill her. If it needed live people, why would it have tied the guys up like that in the bone-field? Obviously they were meant to be dinner for something. Had Kaia survived? Was she still alive in the world of her nightmares while this thing wearing her face wreaked havoc over here?

Was that actually Kaia?

As her thoughts chased each other around her brain, that was the one that kept bringing everything to a grinding halt, at least for a second or two. It sure wanted her to think it was Kaia. Must have known she couldn’t pull the trigger on it if it looked and sounded like Kaia. It had to be a shapeshifter. But if it was, did that mean Kaia was still alive? How had they not realized she wasn’t dead?

And around and around she went. 

There was one thing that she couldn’t shake, much as she wanted to. If Kaia hadn’t been truly dead, if this thing needed her alive, or if it was her, then there was a chance. That gave Claire the most dangerous thing she could imagine: hope. Because if there was any hope of rescuing Kaia, not just avenging her, then there was no time to be lying here worrying or sitting around researching. They had to move.

The only question was move where.

When she dragged her butt downstairs, hobbling a bit on her injured ankle, Donna and Krissy were in the kitchen making dinner. Well, cleaning up after making dinner, which was apparently still in the oven.

“Hey, kiddo. Rested up?” Donna asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Claire said. She didn’t believe for a minute that Donna really thought she’d napped, but if Donna was willing to pretend otherwise, she wasn’t about to argue. “Whatcha making?”

“Lasagna,” Donna said as she wiped down the counter. “Krissy here gave me some ideas to mix it up a bit.”

Krissy flushed and shoved her hands into the suds in the sink. It was good to see her be the one embarrassed for a change, even if it was for yet another thing she was apparently good at.

“It’s no big deal,” Krissy said.

“To you, sure,” Donna said. She snapped “Me, I’ve never really put anything other than meat and cheese in it. Figured the tomato sauce counted for veggies.”

“Of course it does,” Claire said. “Why, you putting salad in it?”

It did smell good, and Jody put stuff like mushrooms and onions in hers, which didn’t suck. But it was the principle of the thing, Claire rationalized.

“Zucchini, mushrooms, spinach, and onions,” Donna said. “I leave anything out?”

“I think that about covers it,” Krissy said. She shrugged. “Lasagna’s like pizza: you can put whatever in it. Great way to use up leftovers.”

For people who have leftovers.

That was just stupid. Normal people did have leftovers. Hunters didn’t though. Not the ones she’d met. But Donna was managing to keep some normal in her life. Seemed like Krissy was too.

“Okay, Martha Stewart,” Claire said. “I’ll take your word on that. For now.”

“I spoke to Jody,” Donna said. “Nothing new in Sioux Falls.”

“So we caught the only lead,” Claire said. “Was there anything left behind?”

“Kinda focused on keeping you from bleeding out,” Krissy said. “We should probably go back to check, but preferably with reinforcements.”

“And a flame-thrower,” Claire agreed. 

“Well, I guess I know what someone’s getting for her birthday,” Donna said with a grin.

Claire chuckled in spite of herself.

“Now, you got out of helping make dinner, missy,” Donna continued, “but don’t think you’re off dishes duty.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Claire replied. She chewed on her lip for a second. “So, nothing at all on Jody’s end? Not even a vision?”

“Nope, and I did ask,” Donna said. 

“How much did you tell her?” Claire asked.

“Everything,” Donna said. “Can’t keep important information from the team. That includes our best guesses on what we’re dealing with.”

“And injuries.” Claire groaned. “Jody’s gonna be on her way here with sirens blaring.”

“No, she’s not,” Krissy said.

Claire shot her a look.

“They are coming,” Donna said. “But not until the day after tomorrow.”

“Two days?” Claire asked. She looked between Donna and Krissy. “Are you kidding me?”

“We’ll keep watching for sightings,” Donna said. “If anything shows up, we’ll handle it. But in the meantime, Jody needs to keep her job, and so does Alex.”

“And Patience probably has a math test or something,” Claire muttered.

“This is what we’re fighting for,” Donna said. “For people to be able to have normal lives. We deserve a bit of that too. Plus, somebody needs to earn an honest living.”

Claire let out a huff of laughter at that. She wasn’t sure that was as important as everyone seemed to think. It was useful having a couple of sheriffs and a nurse on their team. That, at least, she could see. Psychic would be useful, too, if she could actually control what she saw, or understand it when she did.

“Other than checking the warehouse to make sure they’re not back,” Krissy said, “and they’re probably not, what else could we be doing than watching for leads?”

Claire grimaced. “Yeah, guess that is about it.”

“Besides,” Donna said, “you need to heal up before you get back out there.”

“It’s not that…”

“You needed two units of blood, Claire!” Donna said. “And don’t tell me it was any kind of fun coming down those stairs with your ankle all tore up like that.”

“I’m fine,” Claire said.

“No, you’re not,” Krissy said. “Look, I know it sucks, but two major injuries in under a week? You’re a liability.”

Claire gritted her teeth. 

“Now, that’s a bit harsher than I’d put it,” Donna said. “But you’ve gotta admit, Claire, you’re not in your best fighting form right now.”

“Not admitting anything,” Claire said. She pulled out her phone and thumbed the screen to life. “Guess I’ll start stalking the local blogs, so at least I’m doing something.”

“That’s the spirit.” Donna’s lips were pressed together tightly. 

She might not be as bad as Jody, but Donna worried too much too. And Miss I Was Raised A Hunter wasn’t helping. Fine. They could win this round, Claire decided. She’d show them, though. She didn’t know how yet, but she would. And if she was very, very lucky, Kaia would be there to see it.

#

The blogs were a dead end. The weather was a dead end. The only non-dead ends Claire had found so far had almost gotten her dead. She supposed some people might take that as a signal to back off.

Good thing she wasn’t most people.

Two days cooped up at Donna’s were two days wasted, but she did have to admit that she had no idea where to go looking other than back to the warehouse. And no matter how much she wanted to get to that, she did agree that unless there was something actually happening there, there was no way it was a good idea to go in without as much force as they could manage.

At least it hadn’t blown up. That had to count for something. How bad off were they when that was where the bar was set, though?

Claire had asked Jody to bring her books. They hadn’t been much help so far, but maybe she’d been looking for the wrong things. If they needed to find a way to Kaia’s Bad Place, well, they weren’t going to help with that. But if they could tell her what, other than a basic shapeshifter, the one with the spear could be, well, that wasn’t nothing.

“This is pointless,” Krissy muttered.

“Gee, ya think?” Claire retorted. “Said that hours ago.”

“No, I mean…” Krissy waved a hand at her laptop. “… the way they have this locked up. Not only is it easy as shit to hack, half the info is publicly available anyway.”

“So, you’re hacking it why?” Claire asked.

“Because if you’re gonna bother locking something down, there should be something valuable on the other side. Maybe not valuable to us, but to somebody. Hopefully us.”

“Right.” Claire shook her head. “What makes you think there’s any point to looking at weather patterns, anyway? Last time, that got us a random crossroads demon. Which, okay, needed to be dealt with, but not what we were looking for.”

“That’s why I’m digging deeper,” Krissy said. “Maybe pressure’s too vague. Maybe there’s something else that correlates with those portals. You can’t tell me ripping a fucking hole in the universe doesn’t cause some kind of atmospheric disturbance.”

Claire shrugged. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Magic had its own rules that didn’t always make sense. It did usually mess with something though, so she couldn’t really argue the point. Besides, it was boring enough as it was. They might as well at least try to find something in the meantime, even if they were basically spinning their wheels.

“So, you tried to get out of the life,” Claire said.

Krissy huffed out a sigh and pushed back from the desk she was sat at. “You really want to bond right now?”

“Just curious,” Claire said. “You’re good. Like, scary good. I can’t really imagine not wanting to hunt unless there was some reason I couldn’t.”

“Really.” Krissy’s voice was flat. “Everything that’s happened in the last few days and you still can’t imagine not wanting to do this?”

“Well, not this.” Claire shot her phone a glance. “Getting out there and killing monsters.”

“Sounds like you’re an adrenaline junkie,” Krissy said. “Gotta say, you can get as good of a rush getting someone’s heart going again or even, you know, stop them from bleeding out, without having to be stuck on a rickety pile of wood surrounded by monsters.”

“Yeah, but you said you couldn’t keep the job because you were out too much,” Claire said. “That you were still hunting. Sounds like you didn’t want all the way out.”

Krissy’s eyes narrowed. “Not wanting to go looking for it and turning a blind eye to what’s happening right in front of you? Two completely different things.”

“That means there was still enough of it you needed to keep getting involved. You know what’s out there. You know you couldn’t avoid it…”

“And that’s why I’m back in! Not because I want to be. Because if this shit’s going down and civilian cops end up trying to handle it, they end up dead. So, yeah, I’m in. I’m all in. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I don’t owe you an explanation.”

Krissy turned back to her laptop.

Claire studied her. Eventually Krissy turned back to her again.

“What?” 

“Just trying to figure you out.” Claire shrugged. 

“I guarantee, you’ll have better luck figuring out what the hell’s impersonating your girlfriend and what to do about it, so why don’t you get back on that?”

“Stop calling her that,” Claire snapped. “I don’t know shit about you, fine. But you don’t know shit about me either.”

“Get over yourself,” Krissy said. “I know enough. Something tragic happened for you to end up with Jody, yeah. But you landed with someone decent. Someone who tried to keep you  _ out  _ of the life instead of destroying what was left of your family to drag you back in.”

“So, what, you think that means I had it easy?” Claire snapped. “We’ve all got our tragic backstories, yeah. You think I’ve had it easy or something?”

“Yeah, actually. I do. I also think you’ve got a death wish.”

“I was a kid when an angel decided to borrow my dad and never bring him back,” she said. “Even possessed me for a hot minute. Promised I could save my dad if I let him, but my dad had to go and beg him to take him instead and ended up getting himself killed. Oh, yeah, and the angel’s still walking around looking like him. Then, my mom decided to go looking for my dad, like that was ever gonna end well, and spent the next few years with another angel feeding off her soul. Eventually I found her, but then she had to go and get in the way when that angel tried to stab me. Then Kaia… Let’s just say I’m sick of everybody else getting themselves killed to protect me.”

Krissy didn’t even blink. “So, what, you think it’s your turn?”

“I think that all needs to be worth something. And if I can’t live up to it, then yeah, might as well go out trying.”

“Oh, Claire,” Donna said from the doorway. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

Claire closed her eyes and took a breath. She had to have been pretty pissed to miss Donna coming home. 

“Claire, they loved you. All of them,” Donna said. “That’s all. I mean, that’s not all. That’s everything. But it’s not something you have to live up to.”

Claire pushed up from her seat and moved to where she could face both of them. “Yeah, actually. It really is.”

Turning on her heel, she stomped through the kitchen and out the back door. She needed some air.

#

The early evening air was cool against Claire’s skin as she walked through Stillwater. It was an all right little city, she guessed. She couldn’t help smiling as she passed the Teddy Bear Park. There were kids climbing on the fake tree and chasing each other around the giant teddy bear. 

Kids were cool. They knew monsters existed, but these kids also knew they were safe. They knew their parents or whoever had their back. They didn’t know people like Claire were around for when their parents weren’t enough, or when they bailed. She hoped they didn’t need to know. Wished she’d never had to.

She hurried along the street.

She’d told herself she was over wondering what it was about her that had made not one but both of her parents leave her. Her dad had supposedly saved the world. He’d made it possible for Castiel to, anyway, according to Dean. Had he been thinking he was going to make the world safer for Claire? Had he been thinking at all? That was when he’d first said yes, though. In that building when Castiel had told her dad to go rest in heaven, he’d begged the angel to take him and leave Claire, though. That time, it had definitely been about her. 

Her mom had thought she was going to put their family back together, or so she’d said. Claire thought it might have been more about wanting her husband back, but if her mom had been lying, it had been to herself as much as to Claire. What she’d done with that Grigori… yeah, she’d still loved Claire. 

How could Donna think that wasn’t something to live up to? She had to be worth both of them getting themselves killed, or else it wasn’t worth anything, and that? That was something she couldn’t live with.

Getting an innocent and terrified girl killed was about as far from living up to that as it was possible to be. That was it. That was all. Krissy didn’t know what she was talking about.

Except… now Claire knew she was the one lying to herself. She doubted it could ever have amounted to anything. Kaia very clearly didn’t want anything to do with hunting and monsters. Her powers had brought her nothing but fear and pain, and Claire could understand just wanting that to stop. Being with Claire, well, that would’ve meant dealing with the monsters in this world, even if she’d managed to find a way not to keep going back to the Bad Place.

Somehow, her feet had taken her to Lowell Park. There were a few people around, but less than there would’ve been mid-day. She found herself a spot in the gazebo away from them and looked out over the water. In the corner of her eye, she saw a young couple holding hands and talking. Kissing. Could she and Kaia have ever had moments like that? Or would it have been all comparing scars?

Her breath hitched and she forced herself to let it out slowly. Kaia had died for her too, and she couldn’t deny that was different. Mad as she was at them for it, she knew her parents had been doing what parents do for their kids. She wished they’d stuck around for her, that she could’ve been enough for them to live for, not just die for, but she still got it. 

Kaia, though. It had barely been two days, and Claire knew there had been something there. It had been more than fear of Patience’s half-assed vision that had made Kaia push her out of the way of that spear. Claire knew she hadn’t meant to take it herself. Kaia had been really clear that her approach to monsters was to run, not to stand and fight. She should’ve just followed through and full-on tackled Claire. Then she’d have been safe too. But she wasn’t a hunter. She didn’t have the reflexes.

Except, why had she turned to face the one who’d thrown the spear. The one that was wearing her face now. Had it already worn it? Kaia knew the jawa-creatures, that was for sure. Had she known that one too? Had she been going to confront it, finally? Would Claire ever know?

Kaia might still be alive. That was the thing. It had hurt like hell to believe she was dead. But now, was she a prisoner back in that world? Or in this one? That was too much to hope for, so Claire let that idea go as soon as it formed. It was like getting stabbed in the gut with that spear to think of Kaia being held captive in that other world somewhere. Would she be tied to a tree like the guys had been? No, if the one with the spear was keeping her alive, it’d be keeping her safe somewhere. It must need her alive. It had to.

So, then what. If they managed to find her and save her, then what? Claire should just keep as far away from her as possible. She’d already gotten her killed once, or close enough. That wasn’t what she wanted, but it was what she should do.

Was that how her dad had thought? How her mom had thought? They were both wrong. They should’ve stuck around for her. If they’d made that choice from the start, it would never have come down to them having to die for her. 

Didn’t matter what Claire wanted, though. If Kaia was smart, and Claire could tell she was, she’d run as far from Claire as she possibly could once they saved her. And they would. Claire didn’t know how. None of them did. But they were going to. And then Claire was going to do what her parents should’ve done. She’d let Kaia decide what was best for Kaia. She owed her that much. Hell, she owed her her life. For once, she might get the chance to pay that back instead of trying to pay it forward, and she would. She’d do it right.

  
She pushed off the railing and turned to walk back to Donna’s. First thing she had to do was figure out how they were going to save her. Having a plan for what came next felt right. Like it locked in that they’d find her, that she’d still be alive, that she’d be able to make that choice. All that was left was to work out how to get there.   



	7. Chapter 7

The next morning found Claire practically vibrating out of her skin. She knew that even if Jody and the others left at the crack of dawn, there was no way they’d get here until mid-morning, but she felt pulled tight as a guitar string. She wasn’t sure what, if anything, she expected to find going back to that warehouse, but investigating it was going to be the first step forward in what felt like an eternity.

When she put her feet on the floor, her ankle reminded her that she’d probably done too much “stepping forward” yesterday when it was still healing. Krissy had given her shit when she’d gotten back. Hard to argue when the bandage was soaked through and needed to be changed. Claire groaned and rotated it in the air lightly a couple of times, looking to be sure the bandage was still dry (it was), before pushing herself to her feet and heading to the bathroom.

_ I can let it heal when this is over. _

Donna was in the kitchen scrambling eggs when Claire got there. The smoky scent told Claire that the covered plate beside the stove held bacon. Maple-cured, if she wasn’t mistaken.

“G’morning, you!” Donna said. “You know where the bread is. Just don’t change the setting on the toaster, and we should be good.”

“Good morning to you too.” Claire rolled up the front of the bread box and pulled the loaf out. “Where’s Krissy?”

“Out for a run.” Donna sighed. “I should probably take that up.”

“Donna, you’re fine,” Claire said. 

“Oh, I know that! But chasing monsters—or running away from them—can take some stamina, you know?”

Claire chuckled. “Oh yeah. I know.”

She’d thought about developing a workout routine once or twice. She was never going to out-muscle a monster, though, so she preferred to focus on outsmarting them. Adrenaline seemed to keep her going just fine. Didn’t mean the idea totally sucked though.

Her ankle twinged in agreement.

When Krissy got back a few minutes later, they had finished cooking (okay, toasting in Claire’s case) and breakfast was ready. She grinned at the sweaty hunter’s surprised face.

“Your turn to be on dish duty,” she said.

“Guess so,” was all Krissy said before she sat down, took a big swig of coffee, and started shoveling eggs into her face.

“Jody called,” Donna said. “She and Patience and Alex should be here about ten. Well, at the warehouse. We’re meeting them, so eat up and we’ll hit the road.”

Claire nodded. That’s about what she’d figured.

“Nothing suspicious on the overnight report,” Donna added. “Just the usual stuff. Coupla bar fights. One really sloppy b and e. None of it near that warehouse.”

“Which means they’re probably making the drive for nothing,” Claire muttered. 

“No,” Donna said, “they’re making the drive so that we have enough of us to clear that warehouse for certain without getting ourselves killed. Once we do that, assuming we don’t find any leads while we’re at it, we’ll just have to figure out our next step.”

“Any idea where else Kaia had been?” Krissy asked before taking another gulp of coffee.

“I mean, before the rehab place, she’d… overdosed,” Claire said. “So there’d be a hospital, at least. But nowhere that the monsters showed. They didn’t even go to the rehab place.”

“No, but the guy who ripped that first hole with her did,” Krissy said. 

“Huh,” Claire said.

“Care to share with the class?” Donna asked.

“Maybe we need to follow his trail, whatever that is,” Claire said. “I think Jody might know something about that. She was the one who brought the guys in to find him in the first place.”

“Still no word from them?” Krissy asked.

“Actually, I got a message from Cas last night,” Claire admitted. “They found the guys’ mother. Brought her and a bunch of refugees back from that other other universe too. So they have their hands kind of full.”

Yeah, she probably should’ve told the others that first. But it had been late when the message had come in, and she wasn’t about to wake them. And considering how useful it wasn’t, it hadn’t made sense to open with it.

“Are you certain, Claire?” Cas had asked. “The Winchesters are actually better suited to acclimating these people to our world. I could be there in a few hours.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she’d answered. Part of her wanted to tell him to, yes, jump in his crappy car and get his ass up here. That part lost. “You should probably take some notes, too. But if you find out any more about how to open these doors…”

The rest of the conversation had gone downhill from there with Cas awkwardly trying to talk her out of going back to that world. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told him she thought Kaia might still be alive, but that information still felt newborn and fragile. Not ready for sharing. 

“But that means they have a way to open those portals,” Donna said. “If Kaia’s still alive…”

“They had one,” Claire said. “Believe me, that was one of the first things I asked. Apparently the spell needs the grace of an archangel, and our world is fresh out now. Jack can open portals, but he still can’t choose the specific world he wants. That’s why he went looking for Kaia in the first place.”

“Hmm,” was all Krissy said to that.

Donna narrowed her eyes at Krissy as if she were trying to read the girl’s mind. Claire wished she knew what she was thinking too, but she had her own ideas that had tumbled through her brain all night. If they could find a way to target the specific place, then maybe Jack could help them. Surely he’d want to help get Kaia back, considering it was his damn fault she’d gotten dragged into this in the first place.

She had yet to meet this nephilim, but Claire was pretty sure she hated him a little. She knew it wasn’t entirely fair, but she wasn’t sure she cared. Anyway, if he could help get Kaia back, she figured she could find it in her to forgive him. It would be a good step in that direction anyway.

So why not tell Cas? Why leave him and Jack on the bench?

Her phone weighed heavy in her pocket, practically begging her to send another message. But there was no point yet. Yeah, it’d take them forever to get here, but unless there was a definite plan, until they knew what was (or wasn’t) in that warehouse, it was too soon. Hell, they could find a still-open portal like had been on that ship. It was thin, but it was what she was going with for now, rather than look too close at why she really wasn’t sending that text.

“We need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs,” she said. “You know, in case we’re the ones who end up stuck in another universe this time.”

“That something we’re planning on now?” Donna asked.

“Not planning on,” Claire replied. “Just having a contingency plan for.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Krissy said, her eyes wide in exaggerated shock.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Claire retorted.

“Ladies,” Donna said, “no fighting at the breakfast table.”

“I’m not fighting,” Claire protested. “Are you fighting?

“Nope.” Krissy shoveled in another mouthful of eggs.

“Well, good,” Donna said. 

#

The warehouse was just as useless as Claire had predicted. Not only had there been no trace of the jawas, but there was no portal anywhere and Patience didn’t get a single vision. Basically, Jody, Patience, and Alex had come all the way here for nothing.

“Not nothing,” Jody said. “Clearing a dead end is important, especially when it could’ve been an ongoing threat. The question I have is what they were doing here.”

“Well, we’ve got a couple of theories,” Donna said. “Either they’re looking for Claire because she’s been to their world, or they’re looking for that Jack fella who opened that doorway.”

Across the room, Krissy was talking with Patience and Alex about something. Claire hoped that conversation was going better than this one.

“If that’s the case,” Jody said, “ that they’re after Jack, I mean, wouldn’t they have been more likely to head up to Bismarck than Harrisburg?”

“We don’t know if he’s ever been to Harrisburg,” Claire agreed. “But Bismarck, that’s where the other dreamwalker was, right? The one that got killed?”

Claire pulled out her phone and typed a quick search.

Jody nodded. “Nothing else has come through from up there. Believe me, I’ve kept an eye on the wire there especially. That was angels that killed him, though, not these other things.”

“But he’d seen this other world, right?” Donna asked.

“I’m not sure we know that for certain,” Jody said. “That’s not the world the guys were looking for.”

“He’d seen it,” Claire said.

Jody turned and looked at her, eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

“Because this article has pictures of his work,” Claire said. She held up her phone. “And I recognize this one.”

“Oofta.” Donna’s eyes went wide. “They grow ‘em big there, don’t they?”

“You can say that again,” Jody muttered. “I’m starting to like the human-sized ones more.”

“It is kind of a stretch,” Claire admitted, “but I’m not seeing any better leads. Derek Swann was in contact with Kaia. Even if the jawas haven’t been there, we might find something helpful.”

Krissy and the others seemed to have finished up whatever they’d been discussing and were walking over to join Claire, Jody, and Donna.

“Um, Sam said something about hacking his emails,” Jody said. “I can’t believe I’m about to suggest this, but why not just get them from him?”

“Because I don’t think I can get anything off an email,” Patience said, “but I might be able to get something off a painting of that world.”

“So just good old breaking and entering,” Jody said. “Great.”

“Nobody said anything about B and E,” Krissy said. “And nobody’s going to say anything about it where you can hear.”

“That’s very thoughtful,” Jody said with the lopsided smile she used whenever she knew Claire or Alex was full of shit, “but how else would you literally get your hands on it? Art’s expensive, and I’m guessing Derek’s widow isn’t too big on random people showing up to look at her late husband’s work for free.”

“The case is still open, right?” Claire asked. “If she knew Derek was a dreamwalker, and he straight up told the reporter for this article so she must, then maybe she’d be open to a psychic offering to try to find his killer.”

“Didn’t you say that was angels?” Alex asked. “What if Patience actually sees who it was? Getting on their radar seems like a bad plan.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Claire said. At least, she didn’t think it did. “They’re not actually all-seeing or whatever.”

“I can’t believe we’re actually discussing this,” Jody said. “Claire, this is an awful long shot. Weren’t you the one who was just complaining what a waste of time it was to clear this warehouse?”

Claire shrugged. “We were already pretty sure they were gone from here. We don’t know anything about Bismarck. Yet.”

“Great,” Alex said. “Another road trip.”

“I thought you were team psychic,” Claire said. Wasn’t this what she, Patience, and Krissy had been cooking up? Or was that little conference about something else?

“Doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to being stuck in a car for the next eight hours,” Alex retorted.

#

It was late when they got to Bismarck, so the first thing they did was find a motel. By some unspoken agreement, they ended up sorting themselves into the same groupings they’d been in the night before. So, of course, Claire dubbed their rooms “Jody’s cabin” and “Donna’s house.”

Krissy called dibs on the roll-away bed, saying it was closer to what she was used to sleeping on.

“You want something really closer to what you’re used to, maybe just put a blanket on the floor,” Claire joked.

“Claire!” Donna exclaimed. She looked like she was about to order Claire to give up her bed on principle.

“Nah, she’s right,” Krissy said. “But I’m a little pickier about being up off the floor in motel rooms than I am in my tent. So, I’ll stick with the roll-away.”

That mollified Donna, and they settled in for the night.

Next morning, they split up. They were going to have to run some kind of con or possibly break in, so Jody and Donna went to do whatever sheriffs from other states could actually do with the locals while Claire, Alex, Patience, and Krissy went to check out the artist’s stuff.

Claire’s heart lodged itself somewhere just below her voice box when she knocked on the door to the studio. Derek Swann’s widow had actually advertised the paintings for sale. Apparently, even though the studio had been locked down as a crime scene for awhile, she was still stuck paying the rent.

“Hello?” A tall, blonde woman with sad eyes opened the door.

“Mrs. Swann?” Claire asked.

“Yes.” She looked over the little group in the hallway. “Are you Claire Novak?”

“Yes. And these are my… friends, Alex, Patience, and Krissy.” She pointed to each of them in turn.

“And you’re here about the art?” she asked. “You’re going to have to excuse me, but the last time I let someone in here who looked too young to buy, my husband…”

“I’d heard,” Claire said. She thought for a second, then continued, “You’re right, we are young, and I’m not sure we have enough money between us for a single painting.”

“Don’t oversell it,” Krissy muttered.

“But we’re also friends of someone your husband had been helping,” she said. She took a breath and forced herself to keep going. “Kaia Nieves.”

Mrs. Swann locked eyes with her. It made Claire squirm, but she gritted her teeth and held her gaze.

“Come in,” Mrs. Swann finally said. She opened the door fully and stepped aside to let them pass.

There were paintings everywhere. Some were beautiful. One looked like ancient Egypt if the pyramids had been like skinny cell phone towers or something. And off in a corner, there was the one Claire was looking for.

“Why didn’t Kaia come with you?” Mrs. Swann asked.

“She’s missing,” Alex said.

“That’s… I didn’t know her directly, but I knew of her,” Mrs. Swann said. “I reached out to her whee I was cleaning out Derek’s email, but I never heard back. I was afraid something had happened to her.”

“It did,” Claire said. “But we’re going to find her.”

Krissy went over to the far side of the studio to look at a painting of a waterfall. It was also halfway between the door and the windows, with a perfect view of each. Claire gave a tiny nod of approval in spite of herself.

“You’re probably looking for this one.” Mrs. Swann went over to the painting Claire had already spotted.

“Yeah,” she said, “that’s the one.”

Patience followed Claire to the painting. Alex stayed behind by the door, looking at some grassy meadow picture. Mrs. Swann ran a hand down the side of the canvas.

“I can’t afford to just give Derek’s work away,” she said. “Having this place closed off as a crime scene bought me some time with the landlord, but I’ve got to get everything out of here by the end of the month and pay up the back rent.”

“That sucks,” Claire said. She thought for a minute about the credit cards in her wallet. She wished she’d thought of them sooner, not that this lady was going to take credit. At least one had a cash advance line, though. She had pulled the maximum cash advance on one of her credit cards on the way here. At best, that would probably be a down payment. “Once we know what you’re asking, though, we can work on getting it together.”

Mrs. Swann looked skeptical but didn’t say anything.

“May I?” Patience asked, stepping past Claire.

Mrs. Swann shrugged and stepped to the side. Patience reached a hand towards the painting, hesitantly at first, then set her jaw and rested her hand on the frame.

Patience gasped and her eyes went wide.

“What…?”

Claire ignored the widow and took a step closer to Patience. If she collapsed again like she had the last time she’d seen the Bad Place, Claire wasn’t going to let her fall and hit her head again. She didn’t need to worry about it, apparently, though, because after a long few seconds, Patience pulled her hand back like it had been burned and took a deep breath.

“She’s alive,” Patience said. “And I saw them both together. The one with the spear, I mean.”

Claire wanted to jump through that painting into that place and go find her. She forced herself to keep her feet planted where they were, because she’d just had an idea how to basically do that.

“How much?” she asked Mrs. Swann.

“What just happened?” the widow asked instead. “Are you a dreamwalker too?”

“No, just psychic,” Patience said, shaking her head with a little frown. “And that was… I’m sorry. I should’ve waited till we’d left.”

“So, it’s true, then? This girl, Kaia, she really goes to this place?” Mrs. Swann looked at the towering monster and visibly shuddered. “She’s there now?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “And we’ve got some ideas how to get to her. Kind of hoping the painting will help.”

“I still can’t… Derek was asking ten thousand for that one,” she said. “I’ve reduced everything by fifty percent, but…”

“We’ll get it,” Claire said.

“We will?” Patience asked. She stared at Claire and left the “how” unsaid.

“I have an idea,” Claire said. She wasn’t entirely sure how to get all of it in cash, and that card would be toast, but it was the only way they’d come up with that kind of money.

“Excuse you,” Alex said, pulling Claire’s attention back to the door.

As soon as Claire saw who Alex was talking to, she groaned. Krissy was going to get a great big “I told you so” out of this. Claire might not be able to straight-up see angels in their true form, but she knew. She always knew.

The angel pushed his way past Alex, knocking her into the stack of paintings she’d been pretending to check out. She overbalanced and sprawled out on the floor.

“Alex!” Claire moved to approach the angel, keeping herself between it and Patience. If the angels had wanted Derek’s widow, they’d have come after her before now. Had they actually sensed Patience reading that painting? Had she really just put someone else in the line of fire?

“Oh, it’s just you,” the angel sneered at her.

Claire’s brow furrowed. “Not who you were expecting?”

“I was expecting a nephilim to set off the wards the others left here,” he said. His mouth twisted like he’d just taken a bite of a rotten lemon. “Apparently they were so sloppy they pinged for a used vessel.”

Claire really wished she had her Grigori sword right then. She’d never tested it on another type of angel, but if it worked on one, it should work on all of them, right? She looked down at Alex, who had a small knife in her hand.

“Keep talking,” Alex mouthed.

“That does sound sloppy,” she said. “But if you can tell whose vessel I was, then you know that hurting anybody here will bring down a world of pain on your angelic ass.”

“It would be worth it—” its angel blade slid into its hand “—to draw the nephilim out of hiding.”

“Why, so you can kill him? Not gonna let you do that,” Claire said. She pulled out her switchblade. It wouldn’t do anything to the angel, but it felt better to have some kind of weapon in hand.

Krissy was closing in on the angel’s flank, gun drawn. Unless she had turned an angel blade into bullets, that wasn’t going to do shit either. Had she seen Alex’s play? Was she going to blow it?

“As if you could stop me,” it said. It gestured at her with its angel blade, using it to point to her much smaller blade. “Surely you know better than to think you can harm me with that.”

“You know,” Claire said, stretching her free hand out dramatically and bringing the blade to her palm, “actually, I do.”

Then everything seemed to both slow down and happen all at once.

Krissy shot the angel, who flicked a wrist and sent her flying backwards into a pile of brushes and crap in the corner with a clatter of metal and soft thud of flesh hitting floor.

Claire darted towards her only to have the angel grab her by her throat and lift her off the floor, fingers digging into her windpipe, only to immediately drop her.

“No!” it shouted as its wings briefly became visible, horribly misshapen and ragged-looking, and then flexed forwards as the angel bent, yanked backwards like a puppet being pulled out of a show before it disappeared.

Claire ran to Alex, who was already pushing herself up from the floor, smearing the banishing sigil as she did. Claire grabbed her elbow and steadied her as she stood. “You okay?”

“Me? I’m not the one who sounds like an angel just crushed my windpipe,” Alex retorted. She ran her fingers along Claire’s throat until Claire batted her away. “That’s gonna bruise.”

“Krissy!” Patience cried out, running past them to where Krissy still lay, unmoving.

Claire and Alex dashed to join her, stopping short when they saw the pool of blood forming under the hunter. Alex pushed Claire and Patience aside.

“Get me something I can use for bandages,” she ordered as she knelt to figure out where the blood was coming from. 

Claire’s eyes darted around the studio. Nothing looked like something she’d want to put on a wound. There were rags, in a pile on one of the tables, but they were covered in paint and a few months of dust. She pulled off her shirt and, with the switchblade she was somehow still holding, started slicing it up.

As she handed the first couple of strips to Alex, she saw what Alex had found. Krissy had managed to land on something sharp in the pile of brushes. Some tool Claire didn’t know the name for. Didn’t matter what it was called. It had managed to slice through Krissy’s jeans and thigh deep enough to have her bleeding like that.

_ Femoral artery  _ her brain helpfully supplied.

“Press here.” Alex grabbed Claire’s hand and slammed it against Krissy’s groin, then shifted it. “No, there.”

“Like that?” Claire knew her face was probably flaming, but she couldn’t care about that. Alex knew what she was doing, and she sure wasn’t embarrassed by any of this. Claire focused on pressing her thumb where Alex pushed it.

Alex pulled her other hand away from the wound and looked at the slowed trickle of blood. “Yeah, that’s good. Don’t let up till I manage to rig a pressure bandage.”

“You mean a tourniquet?” Claire asked.

“You’re the tourniquet,” Alex said, “but just until I can make a dressing. Pretty sure Krissy’ll want to keep the leg when she wakes up.”

Claire swallowed. Yeah, that would be pretty high on her priority list, too. 

“Is there any alcohol around here?” Alex asked, her voice not quite a yell but definitely louder.

“Uh, yeah,” Mrs. Swann said. Her eyes were glazed but then she shook her head and grabbed a bottle from one of the tables, shoving it into Alex’s hand. “Derek used it when he worked in acrylics.”

Claire looked at the pile of crap Krissy was still sprawled on. None of it was weaponry. It was all for making art. And yet it could still take someone out, not even on purpose. She was sure the angel just wanted Krissy away, hadn’t been trying to kill her. Not exactly trying not to, obviously, but still. Getting dead by accident, losing a leg to a stupid accident, both of those just made her taste bile. Not the way for a hunter to go down, even in a fight.

“Okay, you can let go for a sec,” Alex said.

Claire pulled her hand away by an inch, ready to press it in again if she needed to. The lumpy bandage made from Claire’s shirt looked weird. She wasn’t sure how it was supposedly different than a tourniquet, but Alex was the nurse.

“Not instantly saturated. I’ll take it,” Alex said. “That wound’s going to need better than that, though, and she probably needs at least a unit of blood. Maybe two.”

“I don’t know where she got the blood she gave me,” Claire said. 

“Claire, she has to go to a hospital,” Alex said. “It’s literally a freak accident, we don’t even have to explain any weird injuries.”

“But…” Questions upon questions piled up in her head. Did Krissy have insurance? Was it under her real name? If they were going to have to cough up the money to pay a hospital bill, could she really buy the painting that seemed like their best lead so far? Claire bit them all back.

“Already on it,” Patience said, holding up her phone for them to see. 

“Great,” Alex said. “Claire can you call Jody and Donna? I’ve still kind of got my hands full.”

That’s when Claire looked at Alex’s hands. One in particular, that she had doused with the same alcohol she’d poured over Krissy’s wound and was now wrapping a strip of Claire’s shirt around. Of course. She’d cut her hand to banish that angel, and then got covered with Krissy’s blood.

Shit.

Claire shook her head. She couldn’t worry about that right now either. She pulled her phone out of her pocket.

“I think I’m done showing Derek’s work,” Mrs. Swann said. She sank back against the table she’d grabbed the alcohol from. “This loft is cursed.”

“We’ll come up with the money for that painting,” Claire said. “That should cover a lot of the back-rent right?”

“Just take it,” Mrs. Swann said. “If you’re not afraid that it’s cursed too.”

Claire shook her head and thumbed her phone on, pulling up Jody’s contact and calling her.

“What happened?” Jody asked as soon as she answered.

“Patience has 911 on the line for Krissy,” Claire said. “Alex is hurt too.”

“What?” Alex demanded. “This is nothing. You weren’t supposed to… Give me that!”

Claire rolled her eyes and handed over her phone. Then she looked around the loft.

Mrs. Swann looked like she could probably stand to be checked over too, and what would she tell the EMTs? Patience was holding it together, but she’d just had another damn vision, and her eyes were still unusually wide. Krissy was still sprawled out, the strips of Claire’s shirt starting to show bleed-through while Alex checked her pulse and whatever the hell else she was doing.

Patience’s vision had confirmed what they’d guessed, and maybe the painting plus Patience would be enough to focus on the right world. Somehow, though, this really didn’t feel like progress.

#

“Can you take me through it again?” Donna asked. At Claire’s sigh, she went on, “I know, it sucks. But if we’re going to do damage control here, we need to be sure we have all our facts straight.”

Claire nodded. She knew that. It just felt a little too much like turning everything over to the grownups to handle, and that stung. She sank down into the chair in their little corner of the hospital waiting room. Most people seemed to cram up towards the desk, like that would bump them to the front of the line or something. It was stupid, but it gave them a decent buffer to not be overheard, so Claire wasn’t knocking it.

“Apparently the angels thought it was worth keeping an eye on the place to try to find Jack,” Claire said softly. “Whatever alarm system they created for a half-angel apparently got set off by… me.”

“Should it work like that?” Donna asked. Her nose scrunched up like she smelled something bad, or maybe just like she was trying to be a rabbit.

“The one who showed up didn’t seem to think so,” Claire said. “Called it ‘sloppy’ since it got tripped by a ‘used vessel.’”

“Well, now, that’s just rude,” Donna said. “Definitely not very angelic.”

Claire chuckled. 

“So Paula, Mrs. Swann, she saw all this,” Donna said.

“Saw that, saw Patience get a vision off the painting.” Claire shrugged. “Her husband was a dreamwalker. She knows about at least some of this stuff.”

“Still, she couldn’t have expected a screwy angel showing up to cause trouble,” Donna said. “They’ll probably release her once they’re sure she’s not in some kind of state of shock. Which, quite frankly, she should be.”

“She looked like it back at the loft,” Claire admitted. 

“So, the… intruder,” Donna said, “pushed Alex down first, and then Krissy?”

“Krissy took a shot,” Claire said. She didn’t know if anyone was going to go looking for bullet casings. She’d tried to find it without success, so maybe they wouldn’t find it even if they looked. None of the wounds were gunshot injuries, so maybe they wouldn’t look. Still, Donna should know. “Alex got pushed down, I was trying to stall for time while Alex did up a banishing sigil. Krissy took a shot, then she got thrown into that pile of crap.”

“Bad luck that,” Donna said. “Don’t know how she managed to find the exacto-knife like that.”

“But they have it, right?” Claire asked. “I didn’t touch it, like Jody said not to, but Alex did. She had to while she was patching Krissy up. If they run her prints…”

“Unless Krissy wakes up and makes allegations that one of you attacked her, that shouldn’t happen,” Donna said. 

“I wouldn’t blame her,” Claire muttered.

“Hey,” Donna said. “Look at me, you.”

Claire looked up through her lashes at her.

“Krissy talks like she’s been at this longer than any of us. Maybe she has, maybe she hasn’t, but she knew the risks. You don’t get to take responsibility for her choices. It doesn’t work that way.”

Claire took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let it out slowly. “Yeah, I know.”

Didn’t make it any easier to not blame herself, but maybe if she kept telling herself that, someday it would sink in. She wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. In this business, everybody had to be responsible for everyone else on their team, especially whoever was making the big decisions. She might not have made all of them, but them even being on this trail was down to her. That had to mean something, or she could end up getting careless.

“Uh huh.” 

Donna sounded about as convinced as Claire felt.

“Anyway,” Donna said, “we may not have any jurisdiction here, but I think Jody and I made some pretty good connections with the sheriff here. So we should be able to keep this… contained.”

“You make it sound like some kind of plague outbreak,” Claire said with an attempt at a chuckle that sounded and felt more like a cough.

“That’s as good an analogy as any.” Donna smiled crookedly.

Except if it was a disease, they’d be able to contain it, Claire thought. There were systems and protocols and crap that all the hospitals and sheriff offices and whatever else knew. Meanwhile, monsters were everywhere, and it was down to a handful of half-crazy hunters to deal with it? Not that Claire wanted those creepy British douchebags back, but there were definite advantages to having some kind of system.

Just then, the big doors that led to the main emergency room area swung open and Jody and Alex walked through. Claire stood up and shoved her hands in her back pockets, hoping she looked like she hadn’t been worried.

“How’s your hand?” Donna asked.

“Doesn’t even need stitches,” Alex said. “I made sure to cut where it would bleed a lot without having to go deep.”

“Yep, that’s a sentence I never wanted to hear,” Jody said.

“What about…?” Claire raised her eyebrows. 

“They’re doing the basic protocol,” Alex said. She held up a bottle of pills and shook it. “Assuming Krissy’s okay with me knowing her results, I’ll know in a day or two whether to risk my liver on these. And vice-versa, considering some of my blood ended up on her wound, too.”

“And that’s another one,” Jody muttered. “Oh well. Guess that’s a risk of you being a nurse anyway, with or without monsters.”

“Do we know how Krissy’s doing?” Donna asked.

“That’s a little more complicated,” Jody said. “We don’t have any legal relationship, so they’re not saying much other than that she’s stable.”

“That’s more than they probably should,” Alex said, “but considering we came in with her, I guess they’re willing to go that far.”

“Not having jurisdiction stinks,” Donna said.

“Sure does.” Jody shrugged. “But they took our names, and once Krissy wakes up, they’ll ask her if she wants us on her visitor list.”

“Wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.”

“Claire,” Donna said, warning in her voice.

“Whatever. Can we get out of here?” Claire asked. 

“You think we can wait for Patience to get back with our coffee?” Donna asked.

Just then, Patience came through the sliding doors from the parking lot carrying a tray of four coffees.

“Who’s missing?” Alex asked as she looked the cups over and grabbed hers.

“Mine,” Patience said. “I drank it on the way back. They should really make these trays to hold more than four cups.”

“You could’ve gotten two trays,” Claire said. “Put three in one, two in the other.”

“And both hands would’ve still been tied up.” Patience shrugged. “How’s your hand, Alex?”

They went back through everything from Alex’s hand to Krissy’s visitor situation. Patience nodded through it all.

“So, what’s our next move?” she asked.

Claire was glad someone other than her said it.

“For Krissy? Visit if and when they let us,” Claire said. “For the case? Come up with the cash to buy that painting.”

“Wait, what now?” Donna asked.

“We should probably have this conversation back in the car,” Patience said.

“And some parts of it not at all,” Claire said. Jody didn’t need to be worrying about Claire defrauding credit card companies. It was definitely a useful way of paying for stuff, and those companies ripped regular people off all the time, so Claire figured it all balanced out. As a sheriff, Jody couldn’t exactly look at it that way though. Neither could Donna.

“We’re gonna have to stay another night,” Jody said. “I was hoping we’d’ve been on our way home by now. Or following another lead.”

Claire would’ve liked to think that was possible too. She could think of a million things she’d rather have been doing for the last hour and a half other than reliving the biggest clusterfuck in, like, ever. Preferably figuring out how to get to Kaia. The painting was one piece of the puzzle, she was sure of it. Patience was another. But that still left actually opening a door, and that was something they’d need help with. She resolved to make that call once they found where they were staying.   
  



	8. Chapter 8

“What do you mean he can’t help? This is all his fault!” Claire demanded. She glared at her phone as if that would convince it to relay something different than what she’d just heard.

“I mean that, not long before he died, Lucifer stole his grace,” Cas said. He sounded gutted. “I do not believe he took it all, but it may work differently for nephilim. I do not know whether Jack will be able to regnerate it or if he will now be fully human.”

“But Lucifer’s dead?” she asked.

“Yes.” 

Claire thought he could stand to sound happier about that. She guessed he must be worried about Jack. She thought she should be happier that literal Satan was dead, but he was an archangel. They could’ve used his grace with that spell and _then_ killed him. Though she supposed plenty of people had thought they could do crap like that before only to have it blow up in their faces. She still wished they could’ve tried. 

“I am… sorry,” Cas said. “We can find another way.”

“We always do,” she said before ending the call and letting the phone fall into her lap.

Claire pulled out her journal and started scribbling in everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours, especially the parts about the alarm system the angels had rigged and the fact that Lucifer was dead. That’s when she realized that Cas had left out just how Lucifer had been killed. She’d chalked it up to being worried about Jack, or maybe just feeling really conflicted how to react to the news, but now she wondered. What exactly had that cost?

_It all costs too much._

Nothing she could do about it, though. She squared her shoulders and headed back inside one of the adjoining motel rooms they’d nabbed. 

She almost lost her nerve when she saw how eagerly they’d been awaiting the news that they wanted to hear. Reinforcements on the way. Nuclear reactor nephilim ready and raring to go. But he wasn’t and might never be again. She had no idea what their next move would need to be.

“Ooh, I don’t like seeing that look on your face,” Donna said. “Either your coffee turned out really bitter or you just got some bad news.”

“Coffee’s fine,” Claire said before draining the last of it and throwing the cup away. “That’s about the only thing that is, though.”

“What does that mean?” Alex asked.

“Well, good news first.” Claire grimaced. “Lucifer’s dead. So there’s that.”

“How bad does the bad news have to be for you not to look happier about that?” Patience asked.

“Before he died, he stole Jack’s grace, which may or may not ever regenerate,” Claire said. “So, at least for now, he can’t help us get to Kaia.”

“Okay,” Donna said, “I got most of that, but could someone please translate the first part?”

“An angel’s grace is what gives them their powers,” Claire said. “Without it, they’re basically human. I don’t think anyone knows what that really means for a nephilim.”

“And they’re not coming,” Alex said.

“They’ve still got all those refugees to deal with, not to mention the suddenly-human kid. They are still working on how to open these portals, along with a bunch of other stuff,” Claire said. From Cas’ tone, she had a feeling there was more to it than that. He didn’t volunteer any info, though, and she had enough on her plate not to go looking for more trouble. “If they can find another spell or something, they’ll let us know.”

“Good,” Jody said. She looked around at everyone else’s reactions. “What? They’ve got that library there with all kinds of information. That’s where they’re the most use to us, not rushing up here. We’ve got this.”

“Darn tootin’ we do,” Donna said with a nod. 

Alex squared her shoulders. Patience looked less convinced, but she nodded too.

“Okay,” Claire said, “but what does that mean? What’s our next move?”

“Our next move is to do our own research,” Jody said. “The locals didn’t have much for us, and nothing Donna and I looked at so far suggests that those creatures have been here. We need to be sure, though.”

“Meanwhile,” Donna said, “you ladies can see what you can find on inter-dimensional whatchamacallits.”

“I swear, I’m going to start by googling ‘inter-dimensional whatchamacallits,’” Patience said with a little smile.

“You do that,” Donna retorted with a grin.

Claire just shook her head. They’d been all up and down the internet. Krissy was actually the one with the best chance of finding anything not on the open internet, going by the hacker skills she’d shown. She thumbed at her screen to wake it back up and flopped down on the nearest bed.

“Ugh, you sure about that?” Alex asked. “The spreads are usually the grossest part.”

Claire shrugged. “They wash them.”

“Hunters should totally have to take micro,” Alex muttered. She’d pulled her phone out too, though, and was looking up something.

Patience jumped up, grabbed the little notepad off the tv stand and ripped off a page. She handed it to Jody, then the next to Donna, Claire, and Alex.

“Uh, thanks?” Jody said.

“If we’re not going to end up chasing our own tails, we need to keep track of where we’ve looked for what,” Patience said. She drew a few lines on hers and then scribbled a bit and held it up. It was some kind of grid, but that was all Claire could tell from where she was sitting. “This is more or less what I use… used to use for term papers. I know it’s not the same thing, but…”

Claire rolled her eyes.

“Research is research,” Alex said. She frowned at her own paper then looked back up at Patience. “Show me what headers you use.”

The two of them started geeking out. Claire gave a little snort and set her paper down on the bedside table. She leaned over the edge of the bed, reached into her bag, and pulled out her hunting journal. She noticed Jody and Donna did the same with their little sheriff notebooks, though they both looked over Patience’s grid too. So, Alex was the only one who didn’t already have a system. Maybe sometime Patience would stop underestimating them.

#

Eventually, they all ran out of steam, having found a great big pile of nothing, and had to sleep. The room they’d all been in ended up where Jody and Donna stayed. The rest of them shuffled next door, where they got to figure out who had to take the cot that was folded up in the corner.

“I will,” Claire said. “Beats a sleeping bag on the ground.”

“No way,” Alex said. “Then you’ll play martyr all day tomorrow. We do this fair and square.”

“Which means what?” Patience asked.

Alex looked around their room, then grabbed three coffee stirrers from the tray next to the little coffee machine. She pulled out her pocket knife and cut one of them, then put her back to them. When she turned back around, she was holding all three sticks in her fist, and they all looked the same height.

“Seriously?” Claire asked.

“Works for me,” Patience said, reaching and grabbing a stirrer that looked full length.

“Whatever,” Claire mumbled. She picked her stirrer, which turned out to be full length too. “You happy now that you’re stuck on the cot?”

“Not having to listen to you? Ecstatic,” Alex replied. She looked over the belt holding the thing together.

“Need a hand with that?” Claire asked.

“Psh. No. We have ones like this for when parents stay with their kids sometimes,” she said as she pushed one end of the thing up against the wall next to the second double bed, undid the giant clasp and walked the thing backwards as it unfolded. “Whoever’s got this bed just has to remember not to climb out this side when they get up.”

“Yeah, I think that one’s mine,” Patience said.

“Uh, okay,” Claire said.

“What? You think I don’t know that otherwise I’m gonna wake up at two a.m. to Alex yelling because you just ‘accidentally’ stepped on her?”

“Whatever.” Claire threw her bag on the bed closest to the door. Probably just as well this arrangement would put her between the outdoors and the almost-civilians. She unzipped her bag and pulled out the salt. Might as well start locking down.

#

It’s dark, and her hands are tied together when she startles awake. She tries to stand up and realizes her feet are tied too. The air smells weird, like the woods but not. Actually, kind of like…

Shit. She was in the Bad Place.

She wriggled around, trying to either get into a position that she could free her feet or to find something sharp to work on whatever’s tying her hands. She can’t seem to quite reach her ankles, and she decides that once this is all over, she’s totally going to look into taking some yoga or something. Her struggles and contortions have her hair falling over her face like a dark curtain.

Oh well. It wasn’t like she could see much anyway.

“Are you seriously trying to get away again?”

She snaps her head up and finds herself looking at Kaia. No, not Kaia. The thing that killed… almost killed her.

Wait, again?”

“Like you’ve made me want to hang around,” she retorts, snapping her jaw shut when she hears Kaia’s voice come out of her mouth.

“And here I thought we were starting to understand each other,” the shapeshifter said.

Well, she still wasn’t sure it was a shapeshifter, but that’d do for now.

“Understand each other? Not likely,” Claire snapped.

“Have I let any of my canids near you?” the shapeshifter asked. “Have I kept your precious hunter safe?”

Claire didn’t answer. Maybe this was one of those situations where the bad guy would monologue at her and give something useful away.

“That’s why you said yes, isn’t it?” the shapeshifter asked. “To protect her?”

“You can save your parents if you say yes,” she heard Castiel say inside her head.

To her horror, she realized she was back in that warehouse. Her mother’s eyes shone black, and her father was on the floor, bleeding from where the demon had shot him. 

“Yes,” she whispered, and the world dissolved into brilliant white light. She looked up and one of the demons was swinging a pipe down at her. She caught it without a thought and pressed her hand to its head, smiting the demon out of the poor unfortunate it had possessed and sending the man to his rest.

She shot upright in the dark motel room, drenched in sweat and shaking.

What the hell?

Was that just some crazy shit her mind had pulled together? Had Kaia made some kind of a deal? She wouldn’t, would she? 

It would make more sense than that asshole shifter calling off its jawas or whatever the hell it called them out of its own good will.

She wasn’t psychic, though. She’d tried for most of her teens to try and tap into any stray shred of Castiel’s grace. To find her dad. To find her mom. Anything. There had never been a hint of power left.

She padded to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. For a second, she thought she saw rope burn on her wrists, but when she looked again, they were fine. It was her face that looked back at her from the mirror.

“It was just a stupid dream,” she said softly. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

When she climbed back into bed, though, she couldn’t get back to sleep. Instead, she tossed, and turned, and finally watched as the sun gradually brightened the curtains and peeked around them, its yellow rays reassuring somehow. Finally, she dozed.

#

Something soft landed on her head, and Claire batted it away.

“Get up already, lazybones,” Alex said. “They’re discharging Krissy, and we’re checking out of this dump.”

Claire groaned. Pushing her hair out of her face, she sat up and looked around. Some watchdog she’d turned out to be. Patience and Alex were both up and dressed, so they must’ve been up and making noise for awhile. Hell, she could smell the coffee they’d made.

“Any of that left?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Patience said, “if you like sludge.”

“What, did you let Alex make it or something?” Claire asked.

“Oh shut up. Like your coffee turns out any better,” Alex said. “Besides, the whole point’s the caffeine, right?”

“Drinkable caffeine,” Claire said. “Accent on drinkable.”

“Hey, you don’t have to have any.” Alex held up her hands. “I’m good with getting seconds.”

Claire seriously considered letting her have it and seeing if she could grab a cup at the hospital. Then again, hospital coffee was probably just as bad. A yawn split her face and made up her mind. She shoved her feet over the side of the bed and stumbled over to the little coffee pot, poured the last of it into a cup and added all the little flavored creamers and sugar that were left. By the time she was done, it smelled like chocolate-almond-Irish-cream and tasted passable.

“Is that normal?” Claire asked. “Letting someone who needed that much blood go the next day?”

Like she could talk, considering Krissy had basically done the same for her at Donna’s.

Alex shrugged. “No, but they usually have other stuff to keep them there. If she was going to react to the blood, she would have before now. Closest thing I’ve had with patients is a cardiac cath, where they go in through that artery, and they mostly go home the next day.”

“All right then.” Claire shrugged. She wasn’t going to argue. All they’d found here was trouble, mostly, so she was good with blowing town. They had the painting, and she’d pulled another cash advance out of an ATM on her credit card yesterday at the hospital. She’d do the same today, and get at least that much to Mrs. Swann until she could figure out how to get the rest without just doing that every day for, like, a month. The card would probably be burnt before she could come up with it all that way.

“You gonna get dressed?” Patience asked. “Pretty sure Donna and Jody want to leave soon.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Claire slugged down the rest of her coffee and grabbed her bag, dragging it into the bathroom rather than rummaging through it in front of the two of them. She might have gotten shit for sleep, but she didn’t need to look like it.

#

Krissy seemed happy enough to see them, but Claire supposed that was just wanting to get out of there. Her car was still back at the studio, and the hospital probably wasn’t going to just stick her in a cab. Considering the long list of instructions the nurse was going over, Claire was back to being surprised they were letting her go at all.

“Do you have any questions?” the nurse asked. Her name tag identified her as Beth.

“Nah, I’m good,” Krissy said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Want to run those instructions back by me, then?”

“Wash the wound gently when I shower, keep it dry the rest of the time, no baths or swimming, take it easy for a week,” Krissy recited.

“I’m serious,” Beth said. “You pop that wound back open by getting your blood pressure up, you could bleed out before anyone could stop it this time.”

Shit. She was well and truly benched, then.

“Got it.” Krissy’s frown said she definitely had gotten the message loud and clear and wasn’t happy about it.

“Fine, then if you can just sign here.” Beth handed over a clipboard and pointed to all the places she wanted Krissy to sign. 

“Do you have all this paperwork too?” Claire asked Alex.

“Definitely,” Alex said with a laugh. “If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen, and most importantly, can’t be billed.”

“You’re a nurse?” Beth smiled. 

“Yeah, down at Sioux Falls General,” Alex said.

“Cool. So if your friend here tries to go climb a tree or something…”

“I’m not an idiot!” Krissy interrupted. 

“You managed to nearly die by exacto blade,” Beth said. “By accident. Forgive me for wanting to be sure you don’t succeed next time.”

Krissy rolled her eyes.

“I got her,” Alex said, stepping behind Krissy’s wheelchair.

“I can walk, though,” Krissy said.

“Not unless the policy here is different than my hospital,” Alex said.

“Pretty sure no hospital lets patients walk out,” Beth agreed. “All right. You’re good to go. Hope not to see you again.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Krissy muttered.

When they got downstairs, Jody and Patience were in Jody’s car, Donna idling behind them in her truck. Patience jumped out to help Krissy up, but got waved off. Jody stayed in the driver’s seat and watched. 

Alex joined Donna in her truck, and Claire slid into Jody’s car beside Krissy.

“First stop, back to the studio for your car,” Jody said.

“Thanks,” Krissy replied. “What’s our next move?”

“Uh, going by what that nurse said, your next move is bed,” Claire said. 

“She did not say that!” Krissy protested. “You do realize there’s a whole big bunch of stuff in between actively hunting and lying in bed, right?”

“So you are supposed to rest, though?” Jody asked.

“Rest, yes. Which I can do at a desk with a computer or lore books or something,” Krissy said. “Like, for example, if we’re going to pay Mrs. Swann for that painting.”

“I have another six hundred for her,” Claire said, “but if you’ve got a way to…”

“Let’s leave the discussions of misdemeanors and felonies for when I’m not around, ‘kay?” Jody said loudly.

Claire rolled her eyes but didn’t finish her sentence. Krissy caught her eye and gave her a nod when she mouthed, “And show me how.”

They might not know what their next step was going to have to be, but at least they could make sure Mrs. Swann got the money. Claire hoped it would cover what she owed on the loft. She couldn’t imagine it went for that much, but it had been a few months, so it would’ve added up.

“So, catch me up,” Krissy said. “What’s our next move?”

#

“Let me get this straight,” Krissy said as they pulled up to the building holding the artist’s loft, “we’ve got absolutely no way of opening another doorway to that world, so unless that shifter or whatever shows up again…”

“We’re up a creek,” Jody finished for her. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“Wow, that sucks,” Krissy said. “So, I guess that’s my second homework assignment.”

“Yeah, find a spell that doesn’t need an archangel’s grace,” Claire agreed. “When nothing any of us have found on the internet or the guys have found in that library of theirs has turned anything up.”

“Library?” Krissy asked. Her eyes lit up like someone had just announced an extra Christmas this year.

“Some bunker,” Jody said. “Top secret. Thanks for sharing, Claire.”

“Not so secret,” Claire said. “Hunters ask me about it all the time. Good thing I’ve never been there, I guess, so I can’t exactly give directions, but yeah, if it’s supposed to be top secret, I’m not the one leaking it.”

“How are those two still alive?” Patience asked, twisting to look into the back seat.

“Divine intervention,” Claire muttered, then added, “Bottom line is, they’ve been all over it for months without finding anything. So if you’re going to find a spell to do this, you’re going to have to get creative.”

“I’ll think of something,” Krissy said drily as she slid out of Jody’s car and went to check hers out. 

“You think she’ll find something?” Patience asked, watching as Krissy examined her tires and trunk.

“I sure hope so,” Jody said. She glanced up into the rearview mirror at Claire. “I really hope so.”

Claire couldn’t agree more.

#

It took the better part of the day to get back to Sioux Falls. They’d rearranged themselves mid-way so Donna could head back to Stillwater, promising to keep her eyes and ears open. She wanted to know as soon as they had something, but she couldn’t justify staying away from her job without any leads. Besides, she’d said, you never knew when something might turn up in Minnesota.

Other than that one warehouse, which still had no reports of weirdness in the area, nothing had turned up in Minnesota before, so Claire wasn’t holding her breath on that one. Now that she was in Sioux Falls, though, maybe something would show up here. That was the one constant.

“No, it isn’t,” Krissy argued. “Yeah, that’s when I found them, is when you engaged with them. But something was already going on in Harrisburg that you were following.”

“Good point.” Claire wasn’t sure what to do with it, though. The stuff she had flagged to follow in the local blogs was turning up a whole lot of nothing right now.

“And they weren’t far from Sioux Falls,” Krissy continued. “So they might have been looking for you, maybe. Or they could’ve been looking for something else.”

“Or they were still figuring out their navigation,” Patience said. “If they’re getting through on their own, then there’s a way to do it, and there’s something that made it easier to hit Harrisburg than Sioux Falls.”

“Huh,” Jody said. “You might be onto something there.”

So the focus of their research shifted to lore about weirdness in Harrisburg, which turned up… nothing.”

“The Orpheum Theater’s kind of close,” Krissy said, “even if it is in Sioux Falls.”

“Yeah, Jody’s friend Bobby dealt with that ages ago,” Claire replied.

“What about Gitchie Manitou State Park?” Patience asked. “It’s Iowa, but only a few miles out of Harrisburg.”

“Same.”

“There’s an apartment block…”

“I did that one. Tried to, anyway. If it was ever haunted, someone already handled it. Now it’s just a tourist trap.”

“So, what you’re saying is there are — or used to be — a bunch of haunted spots around Harrisburg, but none in town,” Krissy said.

“That doesn’t have to mean anything,” Patience said. “There must be lots of places without paranormal stuff going on.”

“True,” Claire said, “but the jawas didn’t show up in any of them.”

It was thin, but it was the most that they’d come up with on the drive back or once they’d gotten here. 

“So what are we thinking?” Krissy asked. “Protective wards? Holy relics? Something that could be an inter-dimensional beacon?”

“They’ve got their share of churches,” Claire said, “but nothing unusual that I can see.”

Snatches of her dream flashed through her memory. The sight of that demon’s face before she’d smited it. Would she be able to see whatever was luring the jawas if she’d kept any of Castiel’s grace? There was no way to know.

Patience was running a hand over the screen of her laptop. Claire wondered if she was thinking something similar, though she had a much better chance of actually seeing something.

“I bet my grandmother would’ve known,” Patience said softly. “If she couldn’t see it or feel it, I bet she would’ve known a spell to find it.”

“You’re a genius!” Krissy reached into her backpack and rustled around in it, zipping and unzipping compartments until she found what she was looking for. She held up a chain with some kind of pointer hanging off it.

“What the hell is that?” Claire asked.

“A pendulum,” Krissy said. “It’s supposed to be able to help you find weird energetic disturbances. Like EMF but for non-electric crap.”

“Supposed to?” Patience asked.

“I’m no good with it,” Krissy admitted. “The lady who taught me — or tried to teach me — told me to keep it and maybe someday I’d get the hang of it. Maybe you’ll have better luck, since you’re already psychic.”

Following Krissy’s instructions, they cleared space on the dining room table and spread out a map of the greater Sioux Falls region that included Harrisburg. Krissy showed Patience how she was supposed to hold the pendulum and was walking her through how to check different areas. Problem was, there was no way to ensure Patience got a hit in order to get the hang of it.

“Try the shipyard,” Claire said. “We know there was a portal there, and an explosion. Even if that closed the portal for good, it should still have something weird for energy, right?”

The pendulum seemed to get a little more active there, but nothing to write home about. They might have to go back to looking for weird weather, even though all that had gotten them last time was a crappy demon. A demon that mere humans couldn’t see unless they got it to flash its eyes.

“Would holy water help?” Claire asked. “Or, like, any other kind of magical enhancement?”

“Uh, maybe?” Krissy replied. “The psychic who tried to teach me was pretty big on it just being a connection between the person, the pendulum, and the energy. But there are herbs and oils for just about everything.”

Claire knew just the place.

“Okay, Krissy, you chill for a bit. Patience, we’ve got some shopping to do.”

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

A little bell overhead rang when they opened the door and stepped in. Sweet incense filled the air, and it made Claire sneeze. Patience looked around like a tourist, eyes wide and trying to take it all in at once.

“What, you’ve never been in a place like this?” Claire asked.

“What part of ‘my dad didn’t want me knowing about any of this crap’ did you miss?” Patience retorted. “You’re sure this place is legit?”

“I showed you the stuff on the door,” Claire said, “that means it’s legit. And yeah, I’ve stocked up here a few times.”

“Claire!” Jeanette poked her head out from behind the curtain that separated the store from the reading room. “I’ll be out in a few. Just finishing up a reading.”

Claire nodded and wandered over to the bookshelf labeled “Divination.” Most of the books were on basic Tarot and Rune reading, but there were a couple on pendulums. She grabbed one and handed another to Patience, who opened it hesitantly, like she thought it would bite her or something.

Who knew. Maybe it would. That would be something new.

The book Claire had grabbed seemed like it was written for people who didn’t quite believe that magic and stuff existed. Like it was trying to convince the reader there was some psychological explanation for why a hunk of stone on a string (or apparently a ring on a chain, or a few other options) would move a certain way to answer a question. People really would work for it to find a way to explain this crap away. If it worked, it worked. That should be enough. Nobody cared why silver killed werewolves, they just loaded up on silver bullets around the full moon if they knew what was good for them.

Jeanette stepped back through the curtain followed by some kid in scruffy jeans and a paint-spattered shirt. Not who Claire would’ve expected. If he was a local hunter, it wasn’t someone she’d met, but he didn’t look like most other folks she’d seen in here either. He paid and left, and Claire put him out of her mind for now.

“So, Claire, who’s your friend?” Jeanette asked.

“Right. Jeanette, this is Patience. She’s a psychic trying to help me find someone. Patience, this is Jeanette. She’s psychic too, and she’s cool.”

“Hi,” Patience said. “I’m, uh, actually pretty new to all this.”

“New to trying to use pendulums to find people?” Jeanette nodded at the book in Patience’s hand. “Or new to being psychic?”

“New to all of it, I guess,” Patience said with a shrug.

“So how do you usually work?”

“I get visions. They’re not always anything important. Sometimes I don’t understand them until later. After they happen. Apparently touching certain objects triggers them sometimes. Other times, they’re just random.”

“So, not to be rude, but precognition isn’t usually the main skill you want for this. Unless you see some really specific landmarks in a vision, they tend not to really help. How’d you end up on the search party?”

“Our missing person is a mutual friend,” Claire said before Patience could say whatever she was obviously about to. “Another… friend… had the idea to try using a pendulum and maps to find who we’re looking for, but we weren’t getting anywhere. Thought we’d come see if there was anything we could add to amp it up.”

Jeanette shook her head. “Gonna need a little more to answer that. If this person’s still alive…”

“She is,” Claire said.

“… then spirit oil won’t be any help. That’s more for getting info from the spirit realm,”

“Yeah, let’s not try that,” Patience said. She shuddered.

“Right, so are you trying to hone in on her using something of hers?”

Claire shook her head. “But, there’s—or there should be—some pretty funky energy disturbances that would be nearby.”

“Funky like what? EMF?”

“No. Like… like a door to another world,” Claire admitted. She hadn’t wanted to get that specific, but if she wanted the right herb or oil or whatever, it looked like she would have to.

Jeanette laughed. Then she looked back and forth between Claire and Patience and saw they weren’t laughing. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Deadly,” Patience said, setting her jaw.

“Do you know what other world?” Jeanette asked, her brow furrowed.

“We have a painting someone did who was able to see it,” Claire said. “It was good for a vision but not a direction.”

Jeanette’s eyes widened. She worried at her bottom lip for a second, then turned and picked up a rack of little bottles and set it aside to reveal a little box that had been hidden behind it. She opened the box and started poking around in it.

“You’ll want a pretty powerful condenser for that,” she said as she pulled out some little bottles like the ones on the rack. “I’m thinking elder flower, tobacco, mugwort, acacia, and mandrake would pull in the elemental energies you’re looking for.”

“Condenser?” Patience asked.

“Think of it like condensing all the energy you need and focusing it into the pendulum,” Jeanette said. “That’s not exactly it, but it’ll do for now.”

“So, if you’re the expert, why aren’t you volunteering to do the looking, considering my kind of psychic apparently doesn’t cut it,” Patience asked. She looked genuinely curious.

“Never said you didn’t cut it,” Jeanette replied. She took out a little funnel and an empty bottle and started adding bits of the liquid in the other bottles into this new one. They must have some kind of special stopper, because she tipped them all the way upside-down and only one drop at a time came out. “I said what you described was probably not going to be very helpful. I’m best at reading people’s auras and interpreting their cards. That’s not real helpful for this kind of thing either. I could do it if I needed to, but you’ve got a connection to your missing friend. That should help.”

“If that’s the thing that matters, you might do better than me, Claire,” Patience said. “I mean, I’ll try. I want to find her too. But you two seemed like you connected more.”

Claire supposed that made sense, but she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of it. 

_So what is it? Do you want to be able to see stuff other people can’t or not? Can’t have it both ways._

She’d let Patience try first, anyway. She could always try if the bona fide psychic struck out.

“What do we do with this condenser?” she asked rather than deal with that right now.

“Put a few drops on whatever pendulum you’re using,” Jeanette said. “Not too much. You don’t want to affect its physical balance, just its energetic charge.”

“So just dab a little on and go?”

Jeanette turned back to them again and looked at the books they were each still holding. She nodded at the one Patience had. “That one has a good tracking spell in it. Test it first with some basic yes/no questions to make sure you know how it’s going to respond. It might be different than without the condenser.”

“Good to know,” Patience said. “Anything else we need?”

Apparently not, so they paid and headed back to Jody’s.

#

Krissy hadn’t come up with anything new while they’d been out, but Claire noticed the kitchen looked a lot cleaner than when they’d left.

“How’d it go?” Krissy asked.

“Well, apparently some New Age-y stores put special symbols in the window if they know what’s what, so that’s new” Patience said. She held up the bag with the book and the bottle in it. “Oh, and we need to put this condenser fluid on the pendulum to give it a boost.”

“Knew the first part, not the second,” Krissy replied. “Maps are still out in the dining room.”

“Great,” Claire said. “Let’s get to it then.”

Once they got everything set up, Krissy was seated on the far side of the table with the book open to the spell Jeanette had recommended, while Patience stood so that she could touch the painting with one hand while leaning over the map with the pendulum. Claire felt pretty useless just standing there, but she wanted her eyes on the map, which was why she’d agreed to Krissy reading off the spell. It had absolutely nothing to do with her being better at Latin.

Now, if they’d had an Enochian spell, that would’ve been a different story. 

“Okay, so, um, is two plus two four?” Patience looked about as uncomfortable as she sounded, but after a few seconds, the pendulum started swinging back and forth in a straight line, the same as it had done when they’d used it without the condenser stuff. “Right, and is Claire really blonde?”

“Are you kidding me?” Claire asked.

The pendulum kept swinging back and forth.

“Huh, guess I owe Alex five bucks,” Patience said. The pendulum slowed to a stop.

Krissy laughed and Claire rolled her eyes. 

“Is one plus one three?” Patience asked, serious again.

The pendulum started making a little circle.

“That’s different,” Krissy said. “All right. Ready for the spell?”

“Ready when you are,” Patience said.

Krissy took a deep breath and said, _Hoc in loco industria invenire aliena. Ostium invenire in locum suum._

Patience held the pendulum over the northwest corner of the map of South Dakota they’d decided to start with. The pendulum didn’t do anything at first, but slowly, it started to trace out a circle.

Not that they’d expected anything there, but that gave Claire a chill nonetheless.

Gradually, Patience moved the pendulum down along the western border of the state and then across the southern border. It kept making circles. Again, pretty much what they’d expected, which was part of why they’d started far from Sioux Falls. As she got closer, the circles started getting longer.

Claire held her breath as it got closer and closer and the circles got longer and longer. When she reached Harrisburg, it was back to moving in a straight line.

“Okay,” Patience breathed. “I mean, that could still be my subconscious, because we were already thinking that was the likeliest spot, but it looks like that’s a jackpot.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s the only one,” Krissy said. “I mean, we’ve seen them plenty far from there.”

“Feels right,” Claire said. She couldn’t explain why, but it was the same certainty that had had her out there investigating some really sketchy blog posts. She’d been right then, and she was sure she was now. “Now we just need to get more specific.”

They switched out the map of South Dakota for a street map of Greater Sioux Falls.

Krissy repeated the spell.

This time, Patience swept the map from left to right, starting at the top of the town. The pendulum went back to its little circles, that started getting longer… and then rounder again.

Patience furrowed her brow and swept it back past the spot where the circles had gotten longer. They grew longer again in the same spot, but rounder when she moved past it. She brought it back again and started moving it south. The circles stayed ovals for a couple of streets, then started getting rounder again. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Come on, it’s got to be there,” Claire muttered.

She thought she heard Krissy muttering the spell again as Patience continued to move the pendulum slowly. A bit up. A bit down. A bit left. A bit right. She even moved it diagonally, and that’s when she found it. Suddenly the pendulum was swinging in a tight line. 

“I think this is it,” Patience said. Her knuckles paled where she gripped the edge of the painting.

Claire leaned in to look. The line was going back and forth across a patch of land near a couple of familiar streets.

“That can’t be.” Claire drew back and shook her head. “No way. You were specific about it being a doorway to that world, right?”

“Yeah,” Krissy and Patience answered in stereo. Krissy sounded like she was asking a question. Patience just sounded mad.

“Why?” Krissy asked. “What is it?”

“It’s that patch of woods where we found the damn crossroads demon,” Claire said. 

They just stared at each other for a minute.

“Someone want to catch me up?” Patience asked.

“Hunters have this saying,” Krissy said. “It’s never two things.”

“Except sometimes it is,” Claire said. “Maybe the reason there was a crossroads demon hanging around was because people saw the jawas and wanted to make deals to get rid of them. Maybe it showed up there because it picked up on the doorway and just wanted to check it out. We thought we’d followed the wrong energy disturbance because we found a demon…”

“… but maybe it was there because it followed the same energy,” Krissy finished. “We’re such idiots.”

“Maybe it’s time for a new saying,” Patience said. “Like, I don’t know, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and sometimes it attracts moths?”

Krissy gave a lopsided smile. “Kinda long, but I like it.”

“We need to get back there,” Claire said.

“Jody’ll be back in another couple of hours,” Patience said. “So will Alex. It took us this long to figure it out. How about we take the time to make sure we do it right?”

Claire bit back three different retorts. She didn’t want to wait around, but Patience had a point. Maybe not if it was still a revenge mission, but it wasn’t anymore. Now it was a rescue, and for that, she wanted her whole army.

#

By the time they got to the woods Krissy and Claire had already started searching before, it was getting darker. Claire decided that wasn’t terrible. If the portal was getting weak like the one that had been in the ship, it might be harder to see with too much daylight. They’d have to be careful, but they’d find it. They had to.

“We did a left-to-right sweep last time,” Claire said, “so we should start from the right this time.”

“Yeah,” Jody agreed. “Remember, nobody goes through right away. You find the portal, you let the rest of us know, including Donna.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for her to get here?” Patience asked. 

“She’s still over an hour out,” Jody said, “and we’re losing light. Right now, we’re just in search mode. Odds are, by the time we find anything, she’ll be here.”

Claire was surprised to hear Jody say it, but she was relieved. Yeah, she wanted Donna here, too, but she would be. Meanwhile, they needed to get searching.

Jody gave what sounded like a practiced speech on search protocols. It was almost word-for-word what she’d taught Claire and Claire had explained to Krissy. She noticed that Krissy looked as attentive as she had last time. She wondered if it hadn’t really been new to her then either. 

They took up their positions along the tree line, Krissy at the right-most end, then Patience, Jody, Alex, and finally Claire. They each held a flashlight in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Claire had copied the exorcism onto all of them, just in case this thing had attracted more “moths.” They also had a group texting thread started that included Donna so they could update everyone at once if they found something without just yelling. 

They all had backpacks with various supplies, mostly first aid. Some water and dry-as-dirt protein bars too, just in case they actually went through and needed food. Claire privately thought Jody had chosen the worst possible stuff to pack as a deterrent.

“All right, ladies,” Jody said, “let’s do this. See you on the other side, and by that I mean if you get all the way through before the rest of us, wait.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Krissy said.

“Especially you,” Jody said. “The only reason you’re along is because this is supposed to be strictly recon. Do not engage. Got it?”

Claire rolled her eyes. Alex chuckled. Patience just looked back and forth between them like she was wondering what their problem was.

“Yes, ma’am,” Krissy said again.

Jody shook her head and stepped into the trees. The rest of them followed, first Alex and Patience, then Krissy and Claire, so that they made sort of a v-shape. If they managed to keep that formation, it would mean that their two most vulnerable teammates would have help coming from ahead and behind if they ran into trouble. Odds were the wouldn’t all keep the exact same pace and it wouldn’t actually work that way, but Claire could appreciate that it was a good starting point.

Claire stuffed her phone back into her pocket. She wanted it handy, but she also wanted at least one hand free. As she stepped over branches and around trees, Claire focused on going as straight forward as she could, eyes sweeping in front of her for a glowing string of energy in the air. Would it look the same as last time? If the shifter-thing created the portal, would it look the same as if a nephilim had created it? They really had no idea, she admitted to herself, but it was what they had to start with. At least most of them had seen the thing before.

It seemed to take at least twice as long as it had by daylight, but when Claire reached the other side, everyone was there except Krissy. They exchanged looks, and waited a minute. Still no Krissy.

Claire’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw a text from Jody.

[Krissy, you good? The rest of us are through.]

“Should’ve made her stay back,” Alex muttered. She ran a finger under one of the shoulder straps of her backpack.

“It was quiet enough we’d have heard if she fell or something,” Claire said. “She was supposed to just be walking, and she was only supposed to take it easy, not like not even walk, right?”

Alex pressed her mouth into a tight line.

“Great,” Claire muttered. She was just about to say something else when Krissy broke through the tree line.

“Sorry,” she said. “There was a tree down. It was either climb over or go around, and it had some big-ass branches. Figured Alex would kill me if I climbed.”

“Damn right,” Alex said.

“Right,” Jody said. “Considering the potential size of this thing, which is like a piece of damn string, we’re going to need to keep this pattern tight. So everyone’s gonna take just one step to the right.”

They did.

“Now, Claire and Krissy switch,” Jody said. “Claire’ll make better time if that tree’s still in the way.”

“It will be,” Krissy said.

“Also, if you’re not under attack and your phone vibrates,” Jody added, “answer it.”

“Yes ma’am.” Krissy looked like she wanted to go back in the woods and crawl under that tree, but when she passed Claire as they traded places, she squared her shoulders and pushed past.

Claire looked down the line. She couldn’t argue the logic of the switch for time, but now Krissy was on the leading edge of the search. That didn’t guarantee she’d be the one to run into something. That was the whole point of the search pattern: the portal was as likely to be barely visible one foot in either direction as anything. Still, it didn’t sit well with Claire to have the most injured member of the team in that position. And wasn’t this supposed to be her mission?

_Jody’s still the search and rescue expert. Grow up and get over it._

On Jody’s mark, they started walking again.

#

They were on at least their fifth pass when Claire’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and swiped at the screen. The message was from Alex.

[Got it!]

Figured Claire was the farthest from her of anyone. She turned towards where Alex should be, and could see Patience ahead of her, doing the same. By the time she got there, everyone was standing around the weird, glowy, floating string of energy.

“How did we miss this?” Krissy asked.

“Same way it just took us all day to find it,” Claire said. “That and we gave up after the whole demon thing.”

She took a step towards it, but Jody grabbed her arm.

“What? We know Kaia’s alive over there somewhere,” Claire said. “Now we’ve got to go get her.”

“I know. But let’s not go off half-cocked.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Claire said. She had her revolver. She had three knives. And, yeah, she’d found a way to strap the Grigori blade onto her back, because, come on. Place like that? Totally called for big mystical blades. It might even do something to that giant monstrosity that had showed up right as they were supposed to be making their escape the last time. 

“I’m going with you,” Patience said. “Last time, Kaia was your guide. This time, I’m your best chance of honing in on her.”

Claire was about to argue that they weren’t going to have time to wait around for random cryptic visions, but Patience held up the pendulum and bottle of condenser.

“We don’t exactly have a map,” Claire pointed out.

“There are other spells,” Patience replied. “And it’s the best we’ve got.”

That, well, that she couldn’t argue with.

“If you’re not back in fifteen minutes,” Jody continued, “we’re going to assume things aren’t going well, and Alex and I will follow.”

“It took at least twice that long to get the guys!” Claire said.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, “and not everyone made it back. Kind of the point.”

“Then why not go all at once?” Claire demanded.

“So if you walk right into a trap, hopefully you’ve got the bad guys distracted when your backup comes through,” Krissy said. “Don’t fight it, Novak. I’m the one stuck back here trying to get the cavalry if none of you are back by thirty minutes from when you step through.”

From the look on Krissy’s face, not only was she not happy with that, but injured list or not, she was probably going to come through herself as soon as she put up the damn bat signal.

“Don’t forget, Donna’s on her way too,” Jody said. “More staggered backup.”

“Fine,” Claire huffed. “Can we get this show on the road?”

Jody held up her phone showing the stopwatch app, thumb hovering over the “start” button and nodded towards the portal.

Claire drew her sword. It was stupid that the thing that killed her mother had turned into a damn security blanket, but it had, so she was rolling with it. She stepped up to the portal, and then she was through.

Patience stumbled through behind her. She goggled at the giant trees and just general weirdness of it all.

“What?” Claire asked. “It’s not like you didn’t see it before.”

“Not the same as being here,” Patience retorted. “So, no trap that I can see.”

“Yeah, that’s not weird at all.” Claire scanned around them. She kept expecting one of the jawas to jump down out of the trees onto them. They’d been using this portal, right? So where were they? And where was the damn shifter? Most of all, where was Kaia? “So, you got one of those spells ready to go, or should we just wander around with our thumbs up our asses?”

“Right.” Patience pulled out the pendulum, drizzled a little of the condenser over it, and closed her eyes. " _Hoc in loco industria invenire aliena._ "

At first, it didn’t look like anything was happening. Then, the pendulum started to move. It was swinging in a straight line, same as it had done when they were looking for the portal. Its path wasn’t symmetrical, though. Not like it had been back at the house. It looked like it was going more to Patience’s left and away from her than it was back towards her. Patience’s eyes snapped open and she looked in the same direction the thing had been swinging.

“That way,” she said.

“Did you see anything?” Claire asked.

Patience shook her head. “More like felt it. It’s like there’s a magnet over there.”

“Could still be a trap,” Claire said. 

“That’s what you brought that for right?” Patience asked. She swung her pack down rummaged around in it for a few seconds, pulling out a set of tent stakes and jamming one into the ground at her feet. “Better than bread crumbs, right?”

Claire couldn’t argue that. She just hoped they could do this quickly enough that they’d be using them to find their way back, rather than Jody and Alex using them to follow.

“Let’s go.”

#

Claire wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find. Well, no, that was a lie. She’d expected to find something like in her dream: the shifter standing over Kaia, maybe with a bunch of jawas lurking around. Instead, the cocky-ass shifter was leaning up against the trunk of one of the trees, arms crossed over its chest, hood down, clearly waiting for them.

Claire had intended to enter the thing’s lair on her own, leaving Patience in relative safety outside to help Kaia make a run for it while Claire dealt with the baddies. That didn’t really work when there was no lair. 

“You planning to use that on me, Claire?” it asked. Its spear was leaning up against the tree next to it. It made no move to grab the weapon.

“Not until you tell me what you’ve done with Kaia,” Claire replied.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” it said.

“Probably not,” Claire agreed, “but why don’t we start there?”

It pushed off the tree and strode towards her.

“Actually, I think you know,” it said. “You’re no stranger to things not looking like what they are. And yet you’ve missed two perfectly good opportunities to take me out. I think that’s because you know what I am.”

“I know you stole Kaia’s face,” Claire retorted. “I know you’re probably keeping her alive somewhere so you can keep her shape and, I don’t know, maybe her powers? That why you keep coming back to our world?”

“I keep coming back,” it said, “to clean up the mess Jack made. These creatures listen to me, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I have.” Claire felt her arm tiring, wanting to lower the sword. She lifted it an inch higher instead. “Not exactly a selling point.”

“Even though they haven’t hurt anyone?”

“Beg to differ.” Claire lifted her injured arm.

“Whatever you’ve done to get here, you must have learned a thing or two about dream walking,” it said. “Guessing you have some idea how it works.”

“Not really,” Claire said. “Also not interested. Where’s Kaia?”

“Most dream walkers can go anywhere,” it continued. It swept out an arm, the sleeve falling back to reveal familiar scars. “They explore all kinds of worlds. Horrible ones. Beautiful ones. Ordinary ones. Most dream walkers. With one exception.”

“If you’re going to monologue at us, could you maybe cut to the part where you tell us where you have Kaia stashed,” Patience asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” it said. “Not without the backstory.”

“Fine. Keep talking,” Claire said.

“If a dream walker dies in the world they’re visiting, most of them just wake up,” it said. “The really powerful ones, though, sometimes they die in their sleep.”

A chill ran down Claire’s spine as the image of Kaia bleeding out in front of her flashed through her mind. 

_Dead people can’t bleed. And it hasn’t tried to say she’s dead._

“What nobody counted on was a kid too stubborn to do either. Maybe it had happened before, but if so, nobody knew about it. Not even Derek.” It looked at her, eyes sad.

Damn, it had Kaia’s expressions down perfectly. Claire gritted her teeth and willed herself not to puke.

“When one of the creatures from this world tried to kill her, she fought back,” it said. “She fought so hard she tore her soul in two, leaving only part of it to return to her body sleeping in her home world. The weak part. The part of her that wanted to run rather than fight.”

“What are you saying?” Claire asked.

“The creatures had never seen anything like it. They fell down in worship at my feet,” it said. “They are simple, but they did know that was… weird. Decided I could protect them from the bigger creatures here. So, I made this.” It picked up its spear. “I learned how the monsters worked. What they needed to keep them away.”

“That why you tried to feed my friends to them?” Claire demanded. Whatever this thing wanted her to believe, that was one thing it couldn’t change. That and the fact it had tried to kill Claire.

“Giving them offerings kept them from randomly attacking.” It shrugged, but it also looked… guilty?

“That why you decided to kill me? Why you killed Kaia?”

“You brought my lesser self here!” it said. “You were stealing her away, and while she was the least of me, I had every intention of getting her back.”

“So you could do what with her?” Patience asked. “You gonna get to that part of your monologue anytime soon?”

“Least of you? Kaia’s worth ten of you!” Claire snapped.

It gave them a sad smile. “So I could put myself back together.”

Claire felt her heart stop, then start up again at double speed.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You left me,” it said. “You gave up on me.”

“I saw you die!” Claire said. Then she shook her head. No way she was accepting this at face value. “I saw Kaia die. Or I thought…”

“Even if you thought I was dead, you could have brought my body back! You knew this was the world of my nightmares! You left me to get eaten!”

Claire winced and shuddered. That was an image she’d tried very hard not to let take shape in her mind. Believing Kaia dead was bad enough without imagining… that.

Worse, the way it had just said that was the first time it had truly sounded like Kaia.

“So maybe you thought you were swooping in here to rescue poor little me, but I’ve got news for you. I don’t need rescuing. I’m my whole self again for the first time in years, and if anything, I’ve been saving your sorry ass.”

Claire glared. “That why you’re sending your jawa-things to our world? So you can stage a rescue? Get me to believe you’re really her, that there’s any good in you at all, so I don’t kill you?”

“Ever since cocaine-boy used me for a GPS, the walls between the worlds have been thin. At least, the wall between this world and that one. My… jawas… whatever… are still looking for my other half over there. That’s kind of what they do.”

“And why would they do that?” Patience asked. “If this story you’re selling is true, shouldn’t they realize you’re all here now?”

“You try telling them that. It’s not like they speak English.”

“So that’s why they haven’t been wreaking havoc,” Jody said from behind them. “They’re not interested in anything that’s not Kaia.”

Claire startled and her sword arm lowered a couple of inches before she forced it back up.

“That and it seems like they’re confused by people who’ve been here. They were really fixated on that damn boat.”

“So you blew it up,” Alex said—and that shouldn’t have startled Claire, considering she knew Alex would be with Jody. “Great job. You sure that sealed off that rift?”

“If it didn’t, at least they won’t stick around. Their swimming’s about as good as their English.”

That sounded like the Kaia Claire had met. But that had only been for a day (three months and twenty-four days ago). Besides, shifters could steal memories and mimic people almost perfectly. Everything Claire thought to ask it, every challenge that occurred to her to try and prove it was or wasn’t really (or partly) Kaia, she discarded. There was no such thing as anything that only Kaia would know and not the shifter posing as her.

Behind her, she heard a click. 

“Claire,” Alex said, “her eyes. They’re not glowing.”

“Maybe it doesn’t work that way here,” Claire said. “There is literally no way to prove this is really Kaia, or some part of her, and not some kind of shifter.”

“Yeah there is.” Patience took a step forward. She held up the pendulum, looked straight at the thing that looked like Kaia, and asked, "Is this the Kaia Nieves from our world?”

The thing that looked like Kaia raised an eyebrow as she watched and waited with the rest of them to see what this bit of stone on a string could actually say about, well, anything.

The pendulum circled aimlessly for a little while. Was that a no? Was it a maybe? “Answer unclear, try again later”? Then it began to swing back and forth sharply.

“What does that mean?” Jody asked.

“It means that’s Kaia,” Patience said. “As far as I can tell, that’s really our Kaia.”

“Not yours,” she retorted. “You left me for dead. You left my body to be eaten!”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said, choking back a sob. “Don’t blame them. They weren’t here.”

“No, but you were.” She rounded on Claire. “I almost died to save you, to prevent her—”she pointed at Patience“—vision from coming true! And you left me!”

“I tried…”

“You tried to kill me!”

“I tried to go after the thing that had killed you! How was I supposed to know it was part of you?”

Claire swallowed and tried to will the tears to stop streaming down her face. Where could this even go from here? What were they supposed to do? If there was something to kill, she was ready. But this?

“As soon as we figured out you were alive, we came looking for you,” Alex said. “Claire was already on a crusade to avenge you, but once she knew you were alive? I’ve never seen anyone so driven. Not even her.”

“Good for her,” Kaia snapped. “Good for you, Claire. Glad I gave you a mission or whatever, but I’m fine. I don’t need your damn rescue.

“There’s one other thing you should know,” Alex continued.

“No, don’t…”

“For the last few months, she’s cried herself to sleep almost every night,” Alex barreled ahead. “She thinks nobody else knows, but the walls are kind of thin. Sorry, Jody.”

“No, that’s fair,” Jody said.

“So it’s not like I wanted to listen in, but I kind of couldn’t help it, at least until I put my headphones on,” Alex went on. “Thing is, the main thing I ever heard her actually say was your name.”

Claire gritted her teeth. If Alex had just ripped her clothes off and flayed her where she stood, she didn’t think she could feel more exposed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kaia said, throwing her arms up in the air, “am I supposed to just say, ‘oh, well, in that case, it’s all good’? This isn’t a romance novel.”

“I guess what we need to ask,” Jody said, “is whether you really want to stay in this world or come back with us.”

“In this world, they think I’m some kind of God,” Kaia said. “Back there, I’m nobody. Hell, I’m still wanted. You gonna arrest me?”

“Gotta admit, I’m tempted,” Jody said. “But it’s gotta be your decision. If you decide to come back, there are strings I can pull. You could have a fresh start.”

“You wouldn’t be getting pulled back here anymore,” Patience said. “Obviously you know how to travel back and forth.”

“That’s true,” Alex said. She held up her hands in surrender. “Means you don’t need to decide anything now. No pressure.”

Claire wanted to scream. She wanted to punch Alex. She wanted to grab Kaia by the shoulders and shake her until she saw sense. She couldn’t want to stay here! Even if she wanted nothing to do with Claire, she had to want to come back to her own world!

“It’s your decision,” Jody repeated. “There’s just one thing I’d like you to consider.”

Kaia just crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

“You nearly got yourself killed to save Claire. I owe you a debt of gratitude for that, even if it was another part of you that tried to kill her.” Jody took a breath and went on. “You also got the drop on two experienced hunters. Granted, they were on your turf, but still.”

Kaia shrugged.

“That’s it,” Jody said. “Just more facts to weigh into your decision.”

Kaia scoffed, and a roar sounded in the distance.

“Better get going,” she said. “Things are about to get interesting here.”

Claire felt a bizarre sense of deja vu as two sets of hands pulled her back. She couldn’t take her eyes off Kaia though, even as she pulled the hood back up and picked up her spear. When she turned and walked in the direction the roar had come from, Claire finally turned and let herself be dragged along.

They followed the trail of tent spikes back to the portal and stepped through, falling to the ground on the other side in a heap.

“What the hell?” Krissy asked. “I was just about to call… Wait, where’s your girlfriend?”

“Not my girlfriend,” Claire snapped. She stalked off through the woods in the direction of the cars, leaving the others to explain. They apparently knew everything anyway.

When she reached the tree line, she saw Donna had arrived and was just getting out of her truck.

“Hey!” Donna called out. “Did I miss all the fun?”

Claire just shook her head. There were lots of words to describe the last hour or so. None of them were “fun.”

“Is everyone okay?” Donna was closer now, no longer shouting. “Claire, what’s wrong?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Claire said with a laugh that was half a sob. “But she didn’t want to come back.”

Behind her, she could hear the others clambering out of the woods and over towards them.

“Oh, sweetie.” Donna pulled her into a hug. “I know. It sucks when they don’t want to live in your world. I’m sorry.”

Claire thought there was a world of difference between Doug and Kaia, but she didn’t feel like arguing the point, just let herself be held and finally let the sobs take her.

#

Life got back to normal, or at least what passed for normal in Sioux Falls. Alex went back to her job, and so did Jody and Donna. Patience was looking into transferring into Sioux Falls high in the fall to finish out her senior year. Krissy had hit the road almost right away, but she still texted every so often, usually to brag about whatever monster she’d taken down, sometimes with pictures.

Claire was the only one who hadn’t managed to figure out her next steps. There was nothing happening locally. No more jawas, but also no vamps or werewolves or anything. She followed a few news sites to see what was happening further out, but what little she turned up, somebody was on it because the next day’s news looked like someone had taken care of the problem but left a huge mess in their wake. Claire really didn’t need to be running into any other hunters. All teaming up with Krissy had done was put another person in the line of fire, even if she did seem to have fully recovered.

“You know, if you want to take a break from hunting, you could always give college another try,” Jody said after dinner one night when they were the only two home.

“What, hoping I’ll meet someone else and move on?” Claire asked.

“More like hoping you’ll find some more options than however you manage to finance your hunts,” Jody said, her lips twisted into a half-smile. It wasn’t a real smile, but it was better than the tight, worried one Claire had gotten so used to since… well, since.

Much as she hated to admit it, going back to college might not actually be the worst idea, but not for the reason Jody seemed to think. A few computer programming classes would probably go a long way to keeping her ahead of the latest anti-fraud tech.

“Maybe if they offer them online,” she conceded. “You know, so I can do them anywhere.”

“Lots of places seem to do that,” Jody said. “It’s worth looking into.”

“Tomorrow,” Claire said. “Tonight, I just want to go for a walk.”

“Not till those dishes are done.” Jody raised an eyebrow at her.

Claire just rolled her eyes and grabbed Jody’s and her plates. With only two of them, it only took a few minutes to get everything washed, dried, and put away. The routine was annoying, but oddly satisfying too. Claire wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Once outside, she just walked. It was getting dark, but she wasn’t worried. Nothing had been happening, after all, and if something did? She was ready for it.

Her feet carried her to the falls that gave the city its name. She found herself a spot on a rock by a section of rapids. Not too many tourists were around at this hour, and most of them were further down, preferring to watch the water spill downhill. That was pretty, she guessed, but what she really liked was the sound of the falls as she watched the water hurtling towards it. It felt like her. Felt like home.

Maybe she should’ve picked a spot further down, she thought. She’d already hurtled over the edge, it felt like, and was stuck in the churning pool like some fish that didn’t know which way to swim. The current should pull it along, but no, that fish just swam in circles, letting the falls beat down on it. Stupid hypothetical fish.

“You planning on going for a swim?” a voice asked from beside her.

Claire startled and looked up. Either she was actually losing it, or Kaia was standing there looking down at her, wearing that stupid robe but with the hood down. No spear though. Huh. Claire took a breath to steady herself.

“Not the best way to add to the scar collection,” she said after a long moment. “Might make for an interesting story though.”

Kaia sat down next to her and looked out over the water. She didn’t say anything.

“Why are you here?” Claire asked.

“Thought you wanted me here.” Kaia didn’t even look at her as she responded.

“I did! I do!” Claire fumbled for the right thing to say. Problem was, she had no idea what that would be. “But I thought you didn’t want to be.”

“Part of me does.”

Kaia didn’t say anything else for a moment, leaving Claire to wonder exactly what that meant for someone who had literally been split in two. Was it the part of her Claire had known that wanted to stay? Or did some part of the Kaia that had lived for years in that other world want to be here too? For that matter, Claire wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this new Kaia, who wasn’t exactly either of those people but some new combination.

“I’m not sure how this works anymore,” Kaia said at last. “Part of me learned to be a fighter worshiped by monsters. Part of me learned to run from the monsters, from my powers, from everything. But this new me? I’m not sure where I fit anymore.”

“I’ve been a few different things too,” Claire admitted. “A normal kid. An angel. A werewolf. A hunter.”

“You were an angel?”

“For a hot minute. Less time than I was a werewolf.” Claire wasn’t sure where to go with that. It wasn’t the same, not really. But it was the best she could offer.

“So how do you just be you now? How do you make that all fit?”

“Who says it does? I’m just making it up as I go along.” Claire shrugged. “Maybe you can too.”

They both just sat and watched the water for a bit.

“Well, if we’re going to make it up as we go,” Kaia said, “I’m thinking the first step is pizza. Neither of me has had pizza in ages.”

“Yeah, I think we can do that.” Claire pushed up to her feet and offered Kaia a hand up.

At first, Kaia looked like she was going to ignore that and just get up on her own. Then she gripped Claire’s hand and pulled herself up. The connection was like a jolt of electricity, and Claire hoped that didn’t show. Whatever they were doing, she knew it would need to go slow.

“First, though,” Claire added, “we need to get you some this-world clothes. Let’s head to Jody’s, and you can borrow some of mine.”

Kaia looked Claire up and down, then nodded and fell into step beside her as Claire led the way out of the park and back home. They didn’t talk, but it wasn’t exactly awkward. It also wasn’t exactly not awkward.

Claire’s phone buzzed in her pocket. When she swiped it open, she saw it was a message from Krissy.

[Guess who just bagged a lamia?]

There was a picture of the charred remains of the monster. Kaia looked over Claire’s shoulder at it and laughed. For a second she sounded like the girl Claire had sat on Jody’s stoop with, comparing scars.

It had been four months and fifteen days since Kaia had died. Maybe today was the day she started to live again.


End file.
